Prehistoric Times

BOBORIKINE was not a big man, though not preposterously small, he must have stood, amounted to, or measured a head shorter than me, judging from his uniform, but this head, though shorter, was most definitely wider than mine, judging from his cap, and his limbs were shorter than my own, no doubt in proportion to his modest height, but too short for a man such as myself and consequently the sleeves of his jacket and the legs of his trousers are also too short, whereas with each step I take his shoes slip off my feet, first the left, then the right, then the left, from which I gather his feet were bigger than mine, perhaps even a bit too big for a man his size, just as his stomach was fatter, much fatter than mine because, really, I seem to be spying on the world from behind my curtains in this gigantic jacket, peeping at the little world that surrounds me. Boborikine is dead. I am his replacement. His uniform does not suit me, not in the least. I asked for a new one, made to measure. To be more efficient, I argued, convinced that this argument was sound; to be stricter, prompter, adding: and to represent the profession with greater dignity. I’d even go so far as to believe that my request will be heard on high and satisfied at long last, after all the dillydallying by the administration. Meanwhile, I am obliged to wear Boborikine’s uniform. It does not suit me at all.

It’s a navy blue uniform, as uniforms often are, with gold buttons, as uniform buttons often are — because, before a uniform can stand out among uniforms, it is essential for it to conform to the idea one has of the uniform and likewise the buttons of one uniform must not be too dissimilar from the uniform buttons normally used to button uniforms, lest the very notion of the uniform merge, in the blur of erotic innuendo, with the scantiest panties or those diaphanous chemisettes that evanesce like the first snowflakes upon contact with the ground. As for a uniform worthy of the name, it is, on the contrary, the man who dons it who fades into the background by taking it on, becoming one with the post he occupies and that preoccupies him no less. But Boborikine’s uniform is both too short and too wide for me. Clearly I am not the man it needs.

From on high comes this sharp rejoinder: a uniform needs nobody except to make it stand, and one handful of bran is as good as any other to stuff a doll, Boborikine or me, what’s the difference? My request is unacceptable and is in fact based on an utterly depraved set of values since in all logic it should be up to me, rather, to adapt myself, to gain weight and climb down from my haughty height in order to pour myself into Boborikine’s uniform; already my habit of flowing out of it on all sides could very well be considered a disciplinary infraction, a serious error, insubordination, and as such I am grotesque in this uniform, I disgrace it to the detriment of the entire profession. I will need to change, and pronto, if I want to avoid castigation; my attitude is unspeakable and I am in no position to ask for anything, let alone a uniform: just look how I wear it, have I really inspected myself lately, that free and easy manner of mine, that slovenliness about me, how dare I aspire to a new one?

And from on high, to crush me, they add that Boborikine’s uniform — about which I am complaining precisely because it belonged, and still does in a certain sense, to Boborikine, who was fatter and shorter than I am — was for a long time worn by his predecessor, Crescenzo, who was smaller than he was and thinner than I am, but this never prevented Boborikine from carrying out his duties with distinction, perfectly buttoned up in this uniform, whose cut he contested no more than he questioned the rules of the profession or the duties of his function, and in this he was a worthy successor to Crescenzo, who had even requested to be buried with his uniform — a moving last wish, but hardly a reasonable one; this second skin having survived the emphysematous illness that carried off the poor man, it would have been absurd and criminal to expose it to contamination, as everyone knows a corpse rots everything around it, the entire ambiance, so Crescenzo was quickly stripped, the miraculously spared uniform taken away, dusted off, Boborikine was entrusted to it, and he lived up to it. The same is expected of me, the same flexibility and the same rectitude. It is in my interest, it seems, to make myself very, very small, and fatter.

THE FACT that I am lame, however, complicates matters. I walk with a limp. As a result the left trouser leg appears longer than the right, whereas no, not at all, in reality it’s my left leg that remained stiff after my accident so that, although it is not longer than my right, it gives that impression because of its rigidity; whereas the right trouser leg slides up my ankle just a tad each time my right knee bends in its good old way. Nevertheless, there is a certain symmetry to all this because the jacket’s right sleeve appears longer than the left, another optical illusion explained this time by the infirmity of my predecessor Boborikine, whose right arm was paralyzed after his accident and so he did not have occasion to gesticulate during his career and as a result the corresponding sleeve has no fold at the elbow, unlike the other sleeve, which rides up on my wrist when I move the corresponding arm. To which must be added the fact that the left shoe is scruffy, cracked, practically useless, whereas the right still boasts a bit of chic, having been worn with much less frequency due to the infirmity of Crescenzo, whose right foot was amputated following his accident. Still, by stuffing the cap with crumpled newspaper, I think I can tone down the effects of these handicaps and somewhat improve my appearance.

I was appointed to this post to replace the deceased Boborikine. Things could have been worse, I could have taken a bigger fall; an overhanging rock stopped my plummet and it was only my shattered kneecap — bouncing off the bumps on the side walls — that in the end hit bottom; and if sometimes I enjoy imagining this kneecap rolling faster and faster toward the earth’s center until it slams against the inner core, so what? like one marble shoves aside another taking its place, smooth, hard, and well-oiled, instantly giving back its freedom of movement in space to this old globe — prisoner since Copernicus of revolutions and cosmographies, how wonderful, but to go where? I was hoisted unconscious out of my hole by my fellow adventurers, my left leg twisted, dislocated, bent across my shoulder — what choreographer would ever again dare create a dance as if nothing had happened? Why would man’s art end where pain begins? I see the white wall of the museum through your canvases, those pale waters, what meaning? Lean carefully, rather, over the rim of the hole, direct your gaze at the rock that saved my life, and contemplate for a moment if you will without comment the doleful, star-shaped figure drawn by my blood.

My life was hanging by a thread. It seems they considered cutting off my leg above the knee. In one sense I don’t regret that they came up with a different solution in the end, but, in another, considering my present situation and realizing once again that this left shoe is unworthy of the right — and the comparison is inevitable given that they are most often side by side, always neighbors, sometimes touching — I cannot but think that without a left leg, no left foot, and even less so a left shoe, which as a result would have remained in the closet like the useless right shoe of poor Crescenzo before me, so that my successor on arriving would have found two shoes in the same state of wear, which no doubt gives a man solid standing, whereas I, with one foot in the grave and this other shoe almost new that indeed does seem to belong to the same pair, the individual paths of which would have diverged one day, how did I manage to get here, where on earth have I been, in what frightful company and to trample on what? Clearly I am off to a bad start.

And things will not improve. You could think they might, however, in accordance with the principle of wear and tear that holds true for everything and maintains that what is new ages more rapidly than what is already old, given that ten years completely transforms a child whose father barely fusses about a few wrinkles; you could think that the right shoe — which, in spite of everything, bears traces of Boborikine’s passing this way (burns, scratches, bumps) and is no longer the showcase item it perhaps was to begin with, a lovely object of shiny but sturdy leather, made more for the eye than for the foot — will soften yet, grow deformed, come unstitched, and split open as it treads the soil, to become once again the alter ego of the left shoe, which, for its part, no longer has much to fear from pebbles, because it swallows them whole, or from puddles, having capsized so many times that it is, and will forever remain, like a fish in water. You could think that, but you would be wrong. This could no doubt be verified if my two feet progressed at the same pace, but I limp, must I remind you, the left leg stiff, my knee joint immobilized by a pin, the result of which is, first, that the left shoe lagging behind scrapes the ground from toe to heel or heel to toe depending on the incline, and second, that I am always exceedingly careful about where I place my right foot, my sole toehold, my plinth, my anchor, my hub, my linchpin here below. All of which is to say that the pair will never be restored. On the contrary. As I proceed with this narrative, the disparity mentioned will continue to grow, resulting in greater difficulties of movement and most likely a painful end of the race, after which there will be a heavy, dramatic fall, one more, over there, but we have yet to get there, so let’s get on with it.

UNLESS, of course, I were to work away furiously at the right shoe to accelerate its wear and tear? Since I cannot repair the left, already stitched, glued, nailed, resoled, polished anew a thousand times, and a thousand and one times destroyed anew, now putrid like a dead animal, why not hasten the decline of the right, plunging it one day into a saltwater bath, sheltering a rat in it for a few days, ripping out its steel tips, replacing its black shoelace with some piece of string or other? Finally, the question that occurs to me is the following: is it better to have on your feet two shoes, one of which, more or less acceptable, will partially compensate for the bad impression made by the other, but at the cost of an unfortunate dissymmetry ever irksome to the eye and mind, and which, to boot, runs the great risk of drawing sarcastic remarks my way — always humiliating to my sensibilities — and of tarnishing my reputation? Or is it better to have on your feet two shoes, both in a wretched state, clearly inseparable, as if together they had tackled the most terrible trials and gone through life without losing their stride, side by side in every circumstance, often wounded, helping each other in turn, a fine example of solidarity that in all logic would be attributed to me, and from then on my sorry shoes would bear witness to great moral strength worthy of esteem and respect, and the entire profession would bask in my glory?

Undeniably this second option would be preferable. Yet I must think about my working conditions as well: to do such a thing would be to double the difficulty and discomfort I already endure. If I can no longer support myself on my right foot either, I might as well topple over straightaway. As things stand, these shoes call to mind the not unusual fate of twins separated at birth: one of them will have luck on his side and grow up surrounded by affection and loving care, whereas the other, as if suffering from the aftereffects of those unequally distributed privileges, will remain his entire life within the same four walls, an orphanage quickly morphing into a prison that soon afterward morphs into a hospital. And when chance intervenes and reunites the two brothers, today so different from one another, all they have to recognize and identify each other are the two halves of a photograph on which a grimacing and doubly one-eyed face, pieced together, suddenly lights up with a real mother’s smile, happy, moved, soothed, so much did this simple puzzle — with two disoriented eyes, how do you compose a binocular blue gaze? — seem more improbable and difficult to solve than others of three thousand pieces representing some hazy reflection of sky in water. Whether I want them to or not, these two shoes form a pair.

Above all, they do not belong to me. They will not stop at my graveside. Others after me, my successors, will wear them in turn, big feet or small, they will all have to fit into them, and stay there. I was fantasizing above, it is out of the question for me to harm in the slightest a shoe for which I am the ever replaceable depository and guarantor, responsible, on the contrary, for brushing it as if it were my own foot until it gleams like my own eyeball, for preserving it day in day out so that it will remain in working and walking order for future generations. We pass away more quickly than our shoes, they go on without us, after us, with other people; they are always good for someone who will finally abandon them in turn, but then they will become the joy of some poorer and more badly shod soul whose forsaken straw espadrilles will find a taker of their own, and so on and so forth down to the very last barefoot beggar. Then, when they are really too tattered to serve as shoes, still they will remain shoes no less; travelers at heart, they will go on by themselves, moved by new energies, new forces, river currents, the whim of a stray dog, the road mender’s shovel, or the ceaselessly seismic or volcanic activity of the landscape in the public dumps, the sudden sinking, settling, folding: they will participate in all their precariousness in these rapid and short-lived orogeneses, allowing themselves from time to time a moment of repose among the vapors, soon to resume their climb, toppling over when they’d barely arrived, while the whole mountain crumbles on their heels, slowly, lazily, and another mountain range gently forms or suddenly looms farther away, yet another challenge to take on, and they’ll take it on, no point in dwelling on the matter. I’ve understood: my steps will be neither the first nor the last for these shoes, neither the most hesitant nor the most resolute — I will belong to these shoes as long as my legs will carry me, I mean in particular my right leg, since the left no longer carries anyone; I belong to them body and sole, my feet will just have to accept it.

THE WORK of the archaeologist requires the agility of the young speleologist and the erudition of the old scientist. Rare are the good archaeologists, the ones whose muscles obey and relieve one another like clockwork while their venerable minds chime the hours and date the remains to the nearest second; most often we have to deal either with inexperienced athletic types who somehow fall or slip into the depths and awkwardly trample upon the minute clayey undulations that bore witness to ten thousand years of civilization and would have provided us with all the information we could ever have hoped for about the customs — dietary habits, religious ceremonies, initiation and funeral rites — of these prehistoric peoples, or else with half-blind old men with encyclopedic knowledge who scratch the surface in quest of some improbable new element likely to shed light on the evolution of human species through the ages, and who, as things stand, can count their lucky stars when they manage to get their hands on their glasses, which they’ve somehow mislaid.

I thought I had reached that time of life when the archaeologist, still more or less master of his body, has at last at his disposal the knowledge and experience necessary to intelligently carry out excavations on sites that have been pillaged or damaged — and let me add in passing that the term excavation always seemed inappropriate to me as applied to what we do; in any event it gives rise to an image of a clawlike hand, feverishly excavating and groping, determined to prove that the peace of the fields is resting on assegai heads, an enraged hand that will turn the earth upside down in order to find spent coins and pitcher spouts, whereas we proceed calmly — there is no urgency — and methodically, I was about to say tactfully, why didn’t I? and meticulously, so that we often must have recourse to the tool kit of a neurosurgeon that, as we know, contains more teaspoons than shovels and picks. We work on our knees. We know sand as if we were sand, and mud as deeply as possible. We love dirt — death chewed over by life — it forgets nothing and we, precisely, are interested in everything: the humble details, the slightest indication of man’s presence in these places, traces of his footprints. Our ambition is not to reveal a radiant city and its irradiated population every time we raise a clod of earth, so much the better when it happens; from a plowing instrument, the mossy base of a column, or a tomb containing a body, we learn enough to delight us about the little worlds that preceded our own.

The cap doesn’t suit me either. It’s a kepi of some kind weighed down by a visor that doesn’t suit me at all. I am not a hat man. When I think of the balaclava I wore as a child, I still have the memory of an extra sock protecting my lips and nose from the nip in the air, just as the two others kept my feet from saying a word, and a pair of mittens and a sweater to complete the set and turn me into a real sheep sheared on a regular basis whose wool grows back thicker with each season and whose mended castoffs wind up with a sickly little brother, always suffering from a cold, my shadow cut out in leatherette, my childhood hanging on my every footstep, who does not want to die. I often think about my brother. One day I turned around: he was no longer behind me. Today he is the head of a flourishing cannery of which I myself refused to take charge, after my great-grandfather, my grandfather, and my father before me; when my turn came — the first to escape the singular curse that had been striking the eldest sons in our family for a century — there were shouts, tears, and then my father showed me the door.

Well, I overestimated my strength, I was past the age, I slipped. We were moving forward in single file with me out in front, on the cave’s natural ledge between the slightly convex wall on our right and the definitely concave void on our left. I was the expedition leader. The reliefs from a Magdalenian dwelling discovered a few weeks earlier, one made of colored mortar, had led us to assume the existence of some wall ornamentation on the upper levels. We had to go see, and to do so had to scale stone blocks up to the ledge — a very narrow ledge covered in calcite glinting like ice — then dash toward the network entrance while pursing our lips and opening our eyes wide to shout three exclamations or lay three eggs at once. I was amazed beforehand by what I was about to discover — after so many fruitless explorations, to discover something at long last — in a dark cavity that opened out at the end of that ledge, that very narrow ledge covered in calcite as slippery as ice; I could have taken a bigger fall, an overhanging rock stopped my plummet. The cave, incidentally, revealed nothing of interest, neither engraving nor painting. I was in fact most probably the first man to have left a trace there, without being asked, with my knee, a red star; fieldwork is no longer permitted me. I have very obligingly been recycled here; I’m replacing a certain Boborikine, who was recycled somewhere else. It’s a new task for me, another life is beginning, is about to begin, I should already be there, so I’ve been told, they’re getting impatient on high — are you or are you not going to get down to business?

IT SEEMS that Boborikine was already complaining behind their backs about the cap — it was much too tight for him — and that Crescenzo found it to be a bit too wide, or too deep, the happy medium being exactly that which suits no one to a tee. No two skulls are alike, as any peasant growing his turnips on the site of an ancient necropolis can tell you; no two turnips either, even if an exhumed skull is sometimes so similar to a turnip that you can mistake the one for the other. When you think about it, it might even be that our particular casts of mind — each unique — depend solely on the shape of our skull, individual thought testing itself first against the bone of its brainpan, like music molding itself to the geometry of a dome without regard for the musician’s intentions. Just a hypothesis I’m throwing out here. Indeed, I’m going beyond the call of my duties. But since I haven’t yet taken them up… Let’s grant for a moment that this hypothesis is correct, in which case we can legitimately claim that one’s thoughts will develop more freely in a huge-domed skull — but with the risk of getting lost or confused — than in a narrow, pointy skull, unless, on the contrary, they become sharper and burst forth, which is not impossible. My starting hypothesis thus branches out into diverging subhypotheses: this is how webs are woven; truth cannot be caught by the hand.

And so, what exactly is contained in Professor Glatt’s extraordinary skull? His head is crew cut, his forehead invisible but his occiput abnormally enlarged, his temporal bones protuberant; a head wide and flat, whose unevenly distributed weight would inevitably cause it to draw back were it not for his fearsome neck like a truncated cone implanted in his body all the way to the stomach, spreading the two scrawny shoulders like splints, and their floppy arms that would come loose if not for the two vigorous hands supporting them, holding them back at the last minute, hands so red they are blue, heavy with blood, and nails of purple (but not from the salon), and this entire superstructure is set in motion by legs that are too short, but solid, muscular; I’ve looked and looked but Professor Glatt is not yet to be found in the famous illustration where the encyclopedist sketched the life of the earthling in fast motion, from its origins as protozoan painfully heaving itself out of the water, on its elbows, undergoing until the Quaternary a series of bestial metamorphoses that litter the geological ages with molting, sloughing, shedding of flesh and bones, scales, gray hair, to wind up in the end as a human being and stay there more or less the time to catch his breath before doing an abrupt about face, rapidly tossing off behind him his new clothes but getting back his old palms along the way, to dive headfirst into the amniotic antediluvian liquid, the mother sea, ah, vacation at long last.

There are faces made for drinking and faces made for eating. Professor Glatt’s puffy face is of the eating kind, with his bridgeless nose, fat and flabby, his naturally enlarged and bulging eyes — no need for glasses to see — his sluglike lips, and his chin cleft like a derrière — and it sways like one too, whenever he speaks I get slightly aroused, whenever he laughs, were he to laugh, and especially whenever he chews. He’s got a great appetite. I’ve cracked all my eggs. It’s an omelet like the full moon. A working lunch. It would seem that my attitude is not appreciated on high, I am not up to scratch, my competence and conscientiousness are being questioned. They are starting to regret having entrusted this position to me, some people — and not the lowest of the low — are even demanding I be dismissed outright, some of the most influential people — apparently there are grounds: incompetence, negligence, sloth, gossiping, lack of discipline, I’m much too laid back, I must realize that my nomination provoked jealousy, it would be easy to replace me, there are always a thousand candidates for a single job. The professor came specifically to call me to order: either I get down to work straightaway or else I clear out and do what I must to find another job, understand? And don’t bother inventing any more excuses. We don’t want to hear any more.

That having been said, Professor Glatt is handsome, he has a handsomeness all his own that offends the eye accustomed to judging beauty in reference and by comparison, but in which you can glimpse almost simultaneously its unique, incomparable perfection. It is even obvious that, should the hideousness that makes Professor Glatt so unique and distinctive and exceptional become the norm, the new accepted human form, or rather, when it does become the norm — because I truly believe he is just one little length ahead of the rest of the species — sculptors and fashion designers will work from his measurements. However, because he is still the only one of his kind, all alone, any and all comparisons accentuate his difference and cause the principle characteristics of this avant-garde body to be taken for defects, deformities even, this avant-garde body that is undeniably beautiful, if we forget the others, if we only look at him as he stands against the light and, once the effect of surprise or fear has swiftly worn off, we grow fond of this character who resembles no one else, we become accustomed to his oddness, to his too curt ways; already his face seems charming, we fall under the spell of this man to the extent that we cannot suppress a horrified shiver if by chance one of our fellow creatures suddenly enters our visual field — and this time it’s my own reflection in the windowpane: the professor departs, heading down the sandy garden path through the openwork gate, I breathe on the window, he disappears in the mist, my pale reflection along with him. I hear their car starting up.

NOT ONLY have I taken over his uniform and his duties, but also Boborikine’s house, or rather, the house placed at his disposal as the person in the job previously held by a certain Crescenzo, who himself lived in this very spot but within four different walls. Let me explain: after Crescenzo’s death, the demolition crew razed the tumbledown house that lacked those modern comforts — water and light — and in the exact same spot, a house was hastily erected into which moved his successor, a certain Boborikine, my predecessor, for here I am today living among his furnishings, or rather, among the furnishings placed at his disposal as the person in the job previously held by a certain Crescenzo, whose dilapidated furnishings were burned with no advance warning to nor measures for evacuating and rehousing the thousands of wood-boring insects who with him enjoyed, well, so to speak, the use of said furnishings, worm-eaten woodwork whose flavorful fibers had been chewed and rechewed and by then had the taste of dust; the tables, chairs, wardrobes, and buffets sought their balance in a ceaseless rolling of high tides, and the bed creaked like a door then squeaked like a staircase so that when sleep finally overcame Crescenzo, it fell upon him like a nocturnal visitor paid to assassinate him, and the dreams that followed ended in bloodshed. All that ancient furniture from an anonymous Antiquity was therefore obligingly destroyed by fire, which believes itself everywhere to be in Rome, then replaced by new furnishings, but ones whose sharp corners had already been softened and whose edges dulled by the comings and goings of Boborikine: wood’s worst enemy is the big belly of man.

Indeed the trunk of the plane tree in the schoolyard had been quadrangular at first, then the children danced around it; I don’t say this lightly, I was in the ring. The previous generations had done the bulk of it, I don’t deny it, for us it was mostly a matter of protecting and keeping up their work, whereas I must resume in my name and now carry on Boborikine’s, in his stead and on his behalf, dressed in his uniform that is both too big and too small for me, the jacket too wide, the trousers too short, I’m starting to miss my very first shirt, which was nothing more than a lacy tee in which I resembled, what exactly? An angel who wonders, even before anyone else asks the question straight out, if he’s a boy or a girl, a pretty little girl, please let me be a girl, but no, the damp veil is raised on a fait accompli, it’s a boy like his father, full-fledged and irrevocably so, if ever there had been the least little alternative — the embryo’s false wavering between the impossible and the inevitable — a boy who does not hide his vexation, on the contrary, I struggle, scarlet, screaming, fingers folded into the hands, four monkey fists, I cry over the vanished little girl, already a woman whom I miss and mourn and shall never forget; she was perhaps the woman of my life. I was told that time would ease my pain and that other women would come who would have me and share my days. I waited.

One more word about this childhood before I begin, so you know where I come from in order to understand where I’m going, should I decide to go, but I’m already there, here with a past as long as the life behind me. Some people would be content with this, I could easily stop today, now, as I’m speaking to you, and be silent forever, I could very well have died from my fall without demeaning myself, so don’t go sending Professor Glatt anymore to tell me I’m avoiding or evading, I who should be dead and buried among friends, on the road to decomposing, perhaps crumbling, just when I am about to take on new functions, to fulfill new responsibilities. We were two children fallen from the same bed, so much does the night move, I the oldest, then my brother three years later, a boy as well, it runs in our family, our mother was the only exception, and what an exception, with her dresses and her soft voice; for a long time I believed she really was not one of us, that we had found her in the trash and brought her home, something like that, one of those grisly incidents you read about in the local news.

In reality, she had met my father many years before under less dramatic circumstances. Her father was a friend of my father’s father and my grandfather’s sister’s husband, that is, her father had married my father’s aunt. If ever my duties should leave me the time, I would seriously consider drawing up my family tree to adorn the first two pages of this tale without complicating its reading too much. Simply speaking, my parents’ first connection was one of kissing cousinhood. No matter. Besides, we are all blood relations in the same vein; we lie in the same pool of blood and, because we are all brothers, we are cousins all the more. The wedding was shotgunned when my mother and closest cousin admitted her affair with our cousin my father and confessed that a common cousin would be born in the spring: I came onto the stage through the usual small door — we are all uterine, a genuine bottleneck when you think back on it, without malice, fortunately there are devices at hand to assist — I was pulled out without injury, my closed eyes will open later, lids sealed by the howl that saves you from idiocy, I gave that first scream everything I’d got, you could have built a cathedral around it and baptized me on the spot. I’ve remained hoarse ever since, alone forever beneath the uni-son, the frog in my throat isolates me from the pack — in French they say a “cat in my throat,” how strange is that? we’ll wind up calling everything a cat, contrary to common sense and the bitter truth: this lynx takes my larynx for its mate.

My younger brother, who joined me three years later, traveled the same, though somewhat wider route and, once I got started, I kept on like that for some time, opening the road for the two of us in the enchanted world of childhood. We progressed slowly, it’s raining serpents’ heads, the flora has the reflexes and appetites of fauna but the animals all resemble broad green leaves, I’m clearing my path through it all with a machete, my brother tags along behind, there are so many mosquitoes around us that all the seats are taken, the air is saturated with them, I cut into the flesh of fat steaks bleeding with our blood, believe me or don’t, I’m not making anything up, I’m writing fiction; apparently that’s a job, I could see myself doing it, it seems pretty easy, besides all the seats are taken, decidedly, must I also cut into that, I’m a bit reluctant, I’m not used to this, I don’t have the experience. In truth, our childhood was hardly adventurous at all. We learned with difficulty how to speak, with difficulty how to walk, and then, once that was done, we were ordered to shut up and sit still.

I TOO HAVE my doubts: am I even fit to carry out the duties that have been assigned to me? Undeniably, my past as an archaeologist seems to make me perfect for the position; an archaeologist can never break entirely with his past. If there is a past that follows its man, it is unquestionably the past of the archaeologist; no past is richer in memories than an archaeologist’s past. You can never really put it behind you, you cannot easily rid yourself of an archaeologist’s past: no past remains as present or involves the future so much as an archaeologist’s past. Be there a man who lives in his past, it is surely the archaeologist, and who repeats himself, it is surely the archaeologist — without any particular nostalgia, mind you, without sighing over the good old days or lingering more than anyone else over cursing that evil time, but simply because of the very nature of the work that was his for so many long years. Whereas the archaeologist goes back in time, the march of history continues uninterrupted, progress flows smoothly downstream, and the gap between the archaeologist and his true contemporaries grows ever wider. When he comes up for air, he will have to be filled in on everything — for example the enormous upheavals that have occurred in customs and manners. How could he possibly guess that one can no longer drag women by the hair? He must also be informed of the changes everywhere, innovations in every field. He has fallen so far behind that he will never catch up completely, he will continue to grapple with a present that has passed for everyone else, at least that’s what they think — as if the horse had disappeared with the carriage! For these reasons, the archaeologist is a valuable man, conversant with the origins, and he is perfect, yes perfect, to carry out certain duties, indeed of the type that have been assigned to me.

Ah, but my leg, my voice. It’s work for a good walker, but my leg; and a smooth talker, but my voice. I limp slightly with the left leg, after a fall, I’ll have to tell you about that; and my voice does not come out of its hole voluntarily, it is afraid of the light, I have to moan and groan for a long time to find it, pull it out by hand. My voice is reluctant to leave my mouth, it sticks there like rice pudding, tickles my taste buds, offers to replace a tooth, I part my lips, here it comes at last, I’m speaking, you can hear me if you lean in, it’s a husky voice, very deep, very soft, it couldn’t blow out a candle but it pushes gravel along, a voice to say no, to say shhh, to say a faint farewell like at the end of a long enumeration, its register exhausted, when the words begin to go missing, but that’s not the case, I’d have a thousand things to say, truths to deal out, secrets to divulge if my voice would only come out normally, I have words to amuse, instruct, move, all the words at my disposal, to serve the mind and penetrate the shadows of enigmas, this voice in the brambles of my pharynx brought my answer to the sphinx: more poetry, I know, I heard, I’m not bragging, it just slipped out, poetic verses are naught but the quirks of my conversation. Sometimes my voice cracks on a rare rhyme and my stutter stumbles even more, I don’t really stutter, rather I quaver like a baby goat. Alas my new duties demand, if not the exceptional talents of an orator with his carafe, at least a particular aptitude for public speaking. I have it not. This leads me to wonder if I am really cut out for this job, and so, because I was wondering about the same thing at the start of this exposition, you can refer back to it, for I do manage despite everything to land on my feet. As far as I can remember, I have never actually fallen flat on my face, except that once, my leg.

On the other hand, I have no choice. If I give up this work, how will I earn my bread, my fresh daily bread, and metonymically, the bread that also connotes the jam and the knife to cut it, the drawer in which to store the knife, and the buffet in which to slide the drawer, and the kitchen in which to place this buffet, and the dwelling place that, in addition to this kitchen, must have at least a bedroom with a bathroom, a wardrobe for my wardrobes, winter and summer? There is as much plaster and cotton as there is flour in the baking of the daily bread, it’s a serious trade, baking is; at this point it could even be termed pastry rather than bread — whence it follows that unchained logic is a superior form of lyricism, a blaze of vertebrae, a wild and deductive madness that organizes everything in its path and never lets up until it has reached the end of its implacable proof: is it not obvious by now that one’s daily bread is a veritable party cake, the sort of mille-feuilles or outrageously expensive pièce montée that my disability pension would certainly never allow me to offer myself, and certainly not on a daily basis, my meager disability pension, do I even have the right to the most meager of meager disability pensions? As for my taking up a new career, you’ve got to be joking; it’s out of the question. My only knowledge is of the archaeological sort, my experiences archaeological, my expertise archaeological, and here I am thinking of the remotest eras: I am not even really up on Antiquity, so when it comes to anything after Jesus Christ, I am truly worthless. After Christ, I no longer exist, why deny it? The only thing that interests me is prehistoric times, I can manage there, deep within prehistoric times I hold my head high, I find my landmarks, my ease, for once I feel buoyed by a time period, I am one with it, I understand it better than anyone else, I mold myself to its battles, I love it, I revel in it. If it weren’t in direct contradiction with its very principle, I would give it my name.

THE END of prehistoric times was precipitated by the advent of writing. More precisely, the advent of writing is considered to be what marks the end of prehistoric times; in brief, prehistory comes to an end when the story begins. Present on Earth for three million years, and no doubt tired of being himself (understandably so), immutable despite the morphological transformations that little by little distinguish him from the monkey but do not for all that cause him to resemble the tiger, man became that character in fiction whose extraordinary adventures will continue to unfold from book to book until sooner or later writing disappears because these adventures will wind up becoming tiresome as well: in truth their rapid and uninterrupted succession depicts the most perfect figure of immobility known since the great glaciations of the Quaternary. This modest, off-the-cuff lecture does not have as its sole aim the clarification of the meaning of my trade, nor is it intended as proof of my credentials in the matter; its main purpose is rather the additional reprieve it allows me by justifying my reticence to get down to work, on the one hand, and, on the other, by making me temporarily unavailable by the very fact that it keeps me so very busy and does not leave me the leisure to carry out my duties. Nonetheless, this additional reprieve will be short — Professor Glatt was very clear on this, I have delayed long enough: the reopening of the site can no longer be put off.

Closed due to death. The day after Boborikine died the sign was hung on the gate, what am I saying, on the heavy gate — because the epithet was melted, forged, welded, coated with minium and painted green, and so were the bars, the thick bars that seal the sole entrance to the cave. Visitors are said to have banged their heads against them; perhaps they thought the death notice referred to the creators of the cave paintings inside, whom they had believed already dead for quite some time, years and years; so you see it is best not to tread on the grave diggers’ turf and leave them to bury the mortals themselves when the time comes. And the visitors will have gone back home meditating on this lesson; perhaps along the way they mentioned the analogous, not unusual case of the writer who, famous in his youth, chooses nevertheless to withdraw from the literary scene; we lose track of him but his previous work is still impressive and in print, others are inspired by him, he is quoted, annotated, no one knows how he died, or where, or precisely when. Legends abound, perhaps it was suicide, or an airplane crash in the mountains, the Mexican border, until the day the octogenarian who has calmly lived out his life catches cold on his doorstep and finally dies for the last time, in his bed.

Boborikine’s death has gone on long enough. It is now time to open the cave to the public. Not that, mind you, Boborikine’s death is no longer a sad reality, quite the contrary, it has been confirmed. Boborikine died three months ago and he has not stopped being dead ever since; his death continues as if it will never belong to the past, it is perpetuated in the present, daily, ceaselessly, impossible to see how it will ever end. It is only as an active cause governing the cave’s closing that Boborikine’s death is considered finished, past, of no consequence, with no effect, no tomorrow. In this regard mourning is finito. We can reopen.

Professor Glatt gave me the clef that opens the gate, for I am not a man to write clé when it is possible to write clef, even if in so doing I compel the translators of my tale to slow down — and I trust they see no malevolence where none intended; I would gladly let them have a full page to express this slight difference in leisurely, creative circumambages that will even further delay my taking up my post* and so I shall wait until they have surmounted the difficulty, there’s no bad faith on my part this time, it’s simply a matter of a force majeure, which, by definition, cannot be imputed to me, pace Professor Glatt; my conscience is clear, I didn’t invent writing and when given the choice between two spellings, I always, because I am an honest sort, opt for the one that serves my thought or intention better — a clef is heavy in the hand, it is dotted with rust, worn on one’s belt, unlike a clé, what I understand in any case by clé: its clink-clink like small change deep within your pocket. Likewise, the ornithologist who is also an etymologist will write pic-vert, whereas a bird-watcher who doesn’t give a hoot will write pivert, the way it’s pronounced. I had nothing to do with it.

* Professor Glatt then placed in our narrator’s hand the key that opens the heavy grate, for I am not a woman to write gate when it is possible to write grate, even if this forces the author of this text to go back and do a double take — what did I write? — and even if it forces the bilingual reader to also take another little trip to the original, thereby slowing down the narrative even more — but I was told, nay, assured, that there was no malevolence where none intended, and that the narrator would gladly give me an entire page to express the nuance of his pun in slow and ingenious periphrases that, indeed, delay his taking on his functions even more: so he will wait patiently until I have overcome the difficulty, what else can he do, there’s no bad faith here this time, it’s simply a case of absolute necessity, which, by definition, cannot be imputed to me, whatever the original narrator and his smooth professor think. I have my conscience, I didn’t invent the Babel of this world, and when given the choice between two languages, I always choose English, and when given the choice between two words as well, I always choose the one that serves my thought or idea best, not the author’s — and a grate is heavy to open, it needs an equally heavy skeleton key, dotted with rust, a key you can wear on your belt, unlike the gate, what I understand by gate, a little squeaky tinny place of ingress that needs merely a tiny latchkey to open it, a tiny key that clinks like small change deep in your pocket. Likewise, I’m told, some ornithologists will know the difference between a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker (Downy has a white back and a small bill, like a latchkey, whereas Hairy has a white back and a large bill, like a skeleton key, and any common bird-watcher should be able to distinguish between Downy’s flat pick, which is not nearly as sharp as Hairy’s peek — aha, a pick can be used to pick a lock, a peek can be used to peek through the keyhole — the words came straight from Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies — they have nothing to do with me. [trans.]

WOULD I even confess that I am now eager to get down to work? Why not? But would I manage to extract this confession from myself? What would such a forced confession be worth anyway? Or perhaps I could confess only later to retract my confession, thereby slowing the terrible machine set in motion, jamming its gears? But, once inside, would I still have the strength and clarity of mind to act according to my plans? Am I not instead running the risk of being ground to a powder by attempting to impede the natural evolution of events, then carried off by my own tale as it suddenly obeys the laws of its genre and sprints impetuously and inexorably toward its end, and toward my own as a result, when all the pages have been turned. Is there, in truth, any difference between the page you turn once it has been read and the one you forcefully rip out, twist up, and place on the dying embers to rekindle the blaze? The reader’s left hand holds nothing but ashes; it is not in my interest to race toward the conclusion of this tale and consequently even less in my interest to hurl myself into it headlong and blindly, I’ll go in soon enough.

For I shall get there, I’m already getting there, by the winding routes that are my own, even if at times my pencil point breaks or, more often, slips, dragging the sentence along, which is then diverted and turns into a digression as sharply and unpredictably as a shying horse that is obviously too spirited to have descended from the Forest horse of old with its goatlike beard, bushy mane and tail, dense and wiry coat, sloping croup and crude joints, today represented by those draft or packhorses that taste like beef but most probably belong to the noble lineage of the Steppe horse with its concave profile, stiff coat, strong and slender joints, I’d lean toward one of those swift pintos favored by the Comanche, either an overo, whose coat will be black or brown with big, light-colored patches, or else, no, a white-speckled tobiano, a stallion or a mare, these details are unimportant. Nonetheless, a horse that shies seemingly without reason must have been frightened by something; perhaps a too-jittery horseman conveys his anxiety and the animal, believing a real danger exists, shies away to avoid it. But it also happens that the animal’s panic may be caused by a donkey, a rabbit, a passerby, a stone, a shimmering puddle, or any other unfamiliar object, a milestone, an old shoe, a dead bird, an umbrella, toward which one should immediately lead it so it may sniff and get to know it while seeing to it that the horse doesn’t get worked up again if examining the object were to justify and then increase its fright, in which case the last thing the horseman should do would be to vault off the horse — there is less chance of injury if he remains in the saddle; instead he should try to wedge one of the reins between his arm and the withers of his mount while sharply pulling on the other rein several times; the horse, manhandled in this way, will finally calm down with a few soothing words — but no sugar, which would be rewarding bad behavior — just a gentle tap on the neck and it will get back on the straight and narrow. I’ve made up my mind; tomorrow at the latest I’ll open the gate, or the day after tomorrow, the heavy gate.

What am I afraid of? Of confronting what? Exactly what is so frightening about this task that has been assigned to me? It would be tempting once again I suppose to compare my situation to that of those authors who sit down at their desk all a-tremble and then swallow their erasers. So permit me to state here that my fears are completely unrelated to that tomfoolery and in fact, if you’d like my opinion, it’s not the writer who’s afraid of the blank page, it’s the lousy painter he has repressed who thinks he is being called upon, good lord! he has made no progress, he will never dare show himself. Let’s drop it. As long as the pages are white, I will be there to blacken them. As for penetrating the cave and assuming my duties, that’s another story. I knew it would not be easy from day one, when Professor Glatt handed me the clef. Had he given me a simple clé, I would perhaps have got down to work already, in the middle of my business at the heart of my tale, married no doubt, probably a family man, but the weight of this clef, dotted with rust, that allows one to enter the cave made me tremble as soon as the professor put it in my hand, then its hardness of a thing that cannot be twisted, bent, or broken by human strength alone and that seems to expect the same rigor, the same inflexibility from us — this bayonet was hanging from my feebly extended arm unaccustomed to authoritative and decisive gestures, broken wrist; it seemed harder and harder to me, colder and colder, longer and longer, ever surer of itself as I grew weaker and collapsed; it asserted itself against me, it became more and more clef, heavier and heavier, it fell on my foot. It’s only a clef, I hung it on a nail at home in the living room, next to the map of the cave, which is fixed to the wall with four thumbtacks, three yellow and one red; the red one bothers me, it’s all you can see there in the upper right, it will have to be replaced.

THIS NAVY blue uniform is multivalent, thus perfectly adapted to my dual role as guardian and guide. I will not need to change uniforms in order to switch from one to the other; I am believable as guardian dressed like this, a sort of gendarme or stationmaster, and no less believable as guide, a kind of ship or airline captain, sole master after God (who will not be eternal). Moreover, I shall not switch from one to the other, from my role as guardian to my role as guide and back again, I shall perform the duties of guardian and guide simultaneously. I shall never guide but with one eye, I shall remain guardian as I lead visitors through the cave. Still, I shall be an active guide only for a few hours a day. Thus we discover the real glamour of this uniform, so disparaged earlier, and not without good cause, but wearing which I shall meet head-on and to my advantage the most varied situations resulting from my roles as guardian and guide. Let’s face facts: if it had been a uniform specifically for a guardian, what authority would it confer on me to lead tours? And likewise, but on the contrary, if it were specifically a guide’s uniform, how would I look going about my nightly rounds?

I dare not imagine what my life would become were I to own two distinct uniforms, a guardian’s and a guide’s, which I in all conscience would incessantly and swiftly have to interchange, often putting one on top of the other, or else wearing the jacket of the one with the trousers of the other, every infelicitous combination being possible thereafter, depending on the circumstances, commensurate with the urgency, the caps alternating on my head as if they were simply crossing my mind, one after the other, the cap of the guardian, the cap of the guide; I would risk losing all specificity and before long would be neither one nor the other, neither guardian nor guide, bringing to mind rather some Nero at a costume ball, a toga party, who drapes himself in a plaid travel blanket but is unable to resist donning — such an opportunity will never arise again — his lovely Mexican sombrero (he had been there and, so as to cut short the boring tale of his stay in the Sierra Madre, I see no way out except to greet with a shriek right now the historically incongruous, but nonetheless opportune, nearly naked marathon runner who bursts on the scene). With two uniforms, I too would risk ridicule, guardian above the belt and guide below, a mythical, unimaginable being who hides in his guardian arms the head of a guide, or carries around on his guardian legs the belly of a guide; those who catch sight of him cannot believe their eyes, their testimony is unreliable, they must be drunk, how implausible, and yet new tales come to feed the rumor mill; he has been seen this time in a guide uniform, twisting onto his head a guardian cap. The experts consulted challenge this information: a monster of this sort would not be viable. We know in fact that caves are conducive to hallucinations — angels would be better off in them than bears — we definitely have here a phenomenon of this sort: the witnesses are sincere but fooled by their senses, it’s the only possible explanation. Unless of course we are dealing with the latest manifestation of that mythical creature who has been haunting our imaginations since time immemorial: half god half man, or half man half animal, or half animal half god, who will in all probability eventually spring forth from a test tube in one form or another, but to claim that the miracle has already occurred in some secret laboratory, that the first cross between a guardian and a guide has been pulled off without the one rejecting the other, that henceforward they form one indivisible entity boasting the characteristics of both, and that this achievement now affords the human race the opportunity of infinite progress because a complete man is at last conceivable, one who will contain within himself every aptitude, no, no, it’s nothing like that: the bizarre character glimpsed was especially noteworthy for his bewilderment and ungainliness, decked out as he was with the disparate vestments of his double garb.

’Twas not I. Dressed once and for all in my navy blue uniform, I am at least free of all sartorial concerns. I realize, however, that the solution of a single uniform is but compromise, subterfuge, and that if it indiscriminately clothes both guide and guardian, this uniform actually suits neither a guide who would be only a guide nor a guardian who would be only a guardian. I am being pressured to defend a twofold imposture, I understood that from the start, and my prevarications, my recoiling, the totally useless repetitions that I am nonetheless prepared to justify if necessary with great bad faith but without getting flustered, stating for example that the nearby cave is sending this tale back to us as an echo, once, twice, thrice, and the only way to remedy this would be to distance myself from it, the stalling tactics I have been prolonging well beyond my intention, pushing almost to the extreme the mad enterprise of a total inventory that no one until now has dared attempt, as if all the beings and things of this world were separated only by commas and as if there did not exist between them these layers of indifference or mystery that make them individuals, cut off from one another, but also passing remarks of this sort, reflections somewhat reflective, theories I spin with passion and conviction that could just as well support their opposite, all this dithering in the end is simply a testimony to my scruples: am I not wrongfully assuming the title and characteristics of guardian, dressed in this uniform, and the title and characteristics of guide? This scruple indeed does me credit. I take no pride in it. I had to put forward these moral justifications so that my present behavior, or the behavior of my narrative, would not be unjustly blamed on my laziness. In any case, I am not lazy. In any case, laziness and the routine of work get along quite well. In any case, I’m going to get started.

MY WORK here consists on the one hand of greeting the inquisitive, distributing entrance tickets, leading and commenting on the guided tour, collecting money for the postcards, albums, plaster or resin casts, and photographic reproductions that make up the shop’s inventory (a jammed turnstile, a rickety display case); and on the other of watching over the cave, not only when it is open to the public, when the enemy is within, but after closing time as well, when the enemy has withdrawn; day and night, in other words. Not to mention the upkeep of the site: sweeping with a small hand brush the pebbles, dirt, and seeds carried in on visitors’ shoes, papers fallen from their pockets or tossed carelessly on the ground: contemporary man litters the land with paper, it is the mark of his passing and the sole memento he will leave behind, as if along the way he were crumpling one by one the pages of his own adventure story poorly printed on bus and movie tickets, restaurant checks, empty envelopes, advertising flyers, parish newsletters, strips of cellophane, empty cigarette packs, paper hankies, playing cards, now and then a bit of confetti (there was a party), and, because every boat leaves pretty much the same spume in its wake, I’ve come to the conclusion that the idea of an endless variety of destinies is a storybook notion that does not pan out in reality, and barely in the novel; the facts are there for all to see, there aren’t that many possibilities, I too was breast-fed, first the left then the right, me too.

Then the left then the right, me too; I too was given gifts of cubes and rings, I too had to have a small operation, I too trembled with fright in the changing rooms at the swimming pool, I too did not understand a thing about math, I too had my heart broken by one of my mother’s friends, yes I too my heart by one of hers, and I could go on like this for a long time, until the end, you’d have to stop me; I was afraid of seeing this tale rapidly run out of steam, but it turns out that a second volume will be necessary (forthcoming), and many, many more so as not to omit a thing in regard to our shared personal past, quite a sum, a universal work that will blend all our autobiographies together and spare us all that repetitious reading as it conjures up across the pages schoolyard, attic, punishment, fungus, letter, encounter, lie, accident, song, kiss, fire, exam, fracture, breakup, storm, and the more modest events of this inevitable life, because I too have known the black gnat that always alights on the freshly repainted white door.

Better to use tweezers — with your fingers you might squash the stuck insect, and then it would be impossible to restore the monochrome without a dab of paint, but you’ve already put the top back on the can, your paintbrush is soaking in white spirit, you’ve cleaned your nails and hung the old spotted jacket back on its peg — the same jacket you wore three years ago during that memorable encounter — you also know that even the slightest retouching would be visible, annoying, catch the eye — all that frowning to obtain a perfectly smooth, even surface — and drive the painter from his creation.

It turns out, then, and I am the first to be surprised, that the death of a gnat is an important event if we examine it closely; the sequence of disastrous consequences that follows — notably the unexpected importance that it takes on here, as if this story’s entire significance lay therein — causes one to think hard about the true origin of catastrophes. If the death of one single gnat can bring about such chaos, what happens when two, or even three, gnats die at the same time in the same place? What would the world look like today if the least little gnat had never lived, then never died? Wouldn’t things have evolved differently, in every sphere, favorably or unfavorably, given all the gnats that have lived and died, given that more are dying as I speak, given all that will die before these words reach anyone, that some are dying at the moment these words are finally heard, and that so many will die in the coming days and thereafter that in the end when you add them all up they surely weigh a great deal and insidiously alter the course of our destinies. In sum, the death of all these gnats was one of the necessary conditions without which the world would not be what it is, and I don’t think I’m wasting my time or yours by emphasizing here, for the first time as far as I know, the decisive role of this event, the death of a gnat, to which ordinarily we pay no mind, that more often than not goes unnoticed and never in any case arouses real emotion — the crowds suddenly assembled in pain, this shared mourning reflex that suspends all activity and freezes the clouds in the sky. The death of one gnat is no doubt too unobtrusive to make an impression on us, it is abstract, it escapes the eye that only cries over what it can see; our imagination — whose gift lies more in cosmology than in entomology — can barely conceive of it, thwarted as it is by such minuscule realities, unless of course the stuck insect becomes the sole, central figure on the freshly repainted panel, this door that from now on no one will touch without fear, the kitchen door, as if it opened onto an abyss, all that because of a dead gnat — but no matter how tiny, almost imperceptible, a corpse is still a cumbersome corpse; it’s better to make it disappear before it’s too late — when the paint is dry, you can scrape all you want, a leg will always remain, and nothing is as terrifying as the leg of a dead gnat on a door — delicately remove it with tweezers, if you’d like my advice.

TO SWEEP, I was saying, the pebbles, dirt, seeds, old papers, all the trash strewn by the visitors; to keep the galleries and the gift shop in order. In addition to this daily housework, the maintenance of the cave consists of specific, localized operations, no less delicate than the one I mentioned before, about which I spoke previously, at least I thought I did but I cannot find the passage in question, something about a gnat; yet it seems to me that I did say a word about those gnats that get stuck and die on a freshly repainted door, in any case, that was what I’d meant to do, I no longer know why; possibly to illustrate an idea, to document my point, which perhaps had to do with notions of importunity, or incongruity, and so I would have used the example of the black gnat to demonstrate that even a creature the size of a pinhead, if it sets itself down where it has no business, in this case on a door that has just been repainted white, rapidly becomes importunate, particularly because, as the paint dries, the gnat gets more and more embedded, incorporated, and it was my intention to recommend in such an instance, rather than fingers, using tweezers to grasp the insect and delicately remove it; there now, that’s done.

According to the official version, it has been three months since Boborikine left us, but I am sure he is dead, the cave has remained closed ever since: it really needs a good sweeping. They pay me for that, it seems, whereas my pitiful salary would be just enough to give credence to the idea that I in fact get paid to do nothing. Which would, by the way, justify my lax and relaxed manners — that’s one possible interpretation. For if I get paid to do nothing, as everything would lead us to believe, in particular this pittance of a wage of which I still have not received the first cent, it would be most indelicate of me, and dishonest, to expend any energy counter to the aims of my employers, thereby betraying their trust and the hopes they have placed in me and at the same time ruining their plans. It would therefore be best if I meekly abstained from all initiative and even from the slightest effort. That’s the truth; I’ve been asked again not to move, I’m being held against my will in a state of inactivity that is becoming more and more difficult to put up with for a man of my temperament. One can just imagine that if I could, or if I were to, listen to myself, I would already have gotten down to work, but I’m being paid precisely to curb my zeal and spin my wheels; this is my role in the organization to which I belong, a role all the more thankless in that its meaning completely escapes me: must certain men remain immobile, inert even, so as to serve as reference points for the active ones, as milestones, seamarks, buoys and buffers, foils and bad examples? Consequently, some men would have to be sacrificed, nailed to the spot. But is it not faintly distressing to see my goodwill so scorned? I have been entrusted with an important position, I accept it despite my weakness, determined to show myself worthy, to throw my last strength into my work, and all of a sudden I discover I am being mocked, that in reality I am paid to do nothing; under the pretext that I am housed, whitewashed in navy blue, they are quibbling over a salary that will force me to choose between hunger and thirst.

Another possible interpretation: they consider on high that I was appointed to this position in recognition of services rendered, or services I might have rendered, that is, out of charity, that I was assigned here the way an old horse that ran well is put in a paddock rather than simply slaughtered, but now it would be out of place if we were to ask for a greener pasture or a higher salary: if we push our luck too far, we might even antagonize our patrons, wear out our welcome, and wind up tossed out on the street or led to the slaughterhouse one morning among the mooing, drooling cows that give off steam like ships about to leave shore; from this perspective, their frantic tails are no longer tails. Instead I see the arms of passengers waving farewell with their hankies, farewell, the cleaver smashes the skulls of all those poor wretches. When one pushes one’s luck too far, it goes overboard, and here I am cruelly ejected from the strict limits of my duties, I land who knows where and to my great surprise find myself debating questions that do not come within my remit: how, for example, are my opinions on the slaughtering of animals and maritime companies worthy of holding our attention for so long? Whence stems this authority? Will my questions in fact be transmitted to the right people and taken into account so that henceforth, on the one hand, cows will be received in more kindly fashion in the slaughterhouses and, on the other, the safety of passengers will at last be guaranteed on transatlantic liners? I should hope my observations will be taken seriously. As for this most recent postponement of my narrative’s development, it will at least have allowed us to focus for a moment on what is happening elsewhere. One would too easily have a tendency to cut oneself off from the world. In fact, this might not be digression’s only charm: perhaps I have made more progress than it seems — perhaps, if you think about it, digression really is the shortest distance between two points, the straight line being so very congested.

TO SWEEP, but also and on a regular basis to gently brush with water the cave engravings that are covered in clayey drippings, to spray the walls with a (10 %) formalin solution every week in order to combat the proliferation of algae, moss and lichen, fungus, mold and mildew, all the destructive thallophytes, and to dissolve as well the bat droppings, the acidity of which corrodes the rock, which then becomes friable and crumbles, even if today there remain only a dozen or so chiropterans in the cave, whereas, when it was first discovered, there lived a colony of one thousand. Where have they gone? And where did they come from, how long had they been there, where do bats come from? I’ve often wondered. I’ve always been very curious about bats, that life after death of theirs intrigues me no end. There is nothing less concrete than a bat, nothing more stealthy or noiseless than a bat, fluttering as if in a cage when it’s in the open air, but uncatchable, never in contact, never on the ground: eschatology could not better describe our immortal soul. Every mystery pales in comparison to this one; it touches on the true nature of the soul and the conditions of its afterlife, a twofold enigma that also concerns bats, you can draw your own conclusions.

Some by the hundreds find refuge in the painted caves, our oldest sanctuaries. I deplore the fact that the builders of churches and cathedrals, following the orders of religious authorities blinded by vanity or prompted by their will to power, propelled these aerospace edifices skyward: the higher and pointier they are, the farther they rise from the ground, the more solemn the homage to the Creator, whereas to truly give thanks to Him, it would seem more appropriate to withdraw into the very heart of His creation, to get as close as possible to the earth’s central core, that flawless original diamond that was gradually covered in sediment, tainted, carbonized, buried beneath the mud and petroleum produced by decomposition, all the strata of lies, of dissembling, granite slabs, leaden weights, funerary marbles, rough barks, old crusts, all the way up to this greensward, these fatuous flowerets. Prehistoric artists worked in this direction, toward the depths, their frescoes extol a dynamic world dominated by the powerful and resolute figures of mammoths and bison, where man, beset by instincts as vague and fickle as his desires, remains in the background, his true place in the territory, that of the most ill-favored creature ever in all his nakedness of a beast flayed alive, his skin as sensitive as the water’s surface and his hunger perpetual. The prehistoric artist revered these splendid, sturdy animals; they had no weaknesses, no uncertainty; their senses warned them about the future, they fled winter before the first chill, whereas man awoke one morning shivering, every season took him by surprise, disoriented even when he stayed in the same place, day in day out. Perhaps the first hunting rites performed in these caves in fact evolved not, as I say rather rashly a little further down, from a belief in their magical powers, but from a more or less conscious need to punctuate that laboriously begun, unsettled existence that had no temporal supports or reference points in comparison to the calm self-confidence of animals that simply had to live their lives in order to fulfill their destiny. Time passed without giving any purchase to men. Rituals had to be created in order to control it to some extent so that man could orient himself, gain a foothold at last in a world that was very poorly organized, governed solely by the laws of nature, and in which intelligence was, in short, the too obvious trait of easy prey.

The paintings, often admirably preserved, fossilized by flows of calcareous water, sometimes even protected by a sheet of thin, translucent calcite, are the only irrefutable traces that remain of these rituals and ceremonies, but the deep footprints allow us to imagine there had been dancing as well, and because there was dancing, in all likelihood there was singing; music secured its power, as it does today, through hypnosis and hysteria. I cannot be sure of course, but a certain form of oral literature may have existed, its legendary characters being precisely those reproduced by the painters, an entire animal mythology forged by tales of hunting and combat. This would explain the countless, almost identical depictions in several caves nowhere near each other: those depictions were there only to serve as illustrations for the story that a storyteller, or the painter himself, told aloud for an audience that never tired of hearing it. These paintings, then, really only produced an effect as they were being executed, carried along by the story for as long as it lasted; then they were no longer of interest and the painter had to start on another, the same one, as soon as the storyteller again took up his immutable tale from the beginning. The paintings traveled through the ages, intact, whereas the tales that justified them and gave them meaning have been lost. The paintings live on quite well without them, poignant poetic enigmas, incomplete and perfect, and henceforth they precede every conceivable narrative.

(I know how to show off my erudition when the occasion calls for it, and this is a good opportunity. If I want to slip in my little anecdote, it’s now or never. You may have noticed that nothing is as hard to slip in as an anecdote. Among the forms of commerce that tie men to one another, the exchange of anecdotes is by far the one that works the least well of all. In this business, each person acts exactly as if he had two mouths and one ear. The goal is to prevent the other person from getting to the end of his anecdote, either by taking advantage of a moment of silence or by rudely cutting him off in order to slip in one’s own anecdote, despite the meager interest it arouses in the adversary who is concerned, above all, with getting on with his; and we call this savage and pitiless bickering “conversation,” and it seems the two are still good friends when they part. Nonetheless, since I now have the opportunity to slip in my little anecdote without the constant risk of interruption that often forces us to abridge our anecdotes, or to summarize them in order to spare the listener the minor details when he could just as easily have done without the salient points, having himself on the subject a much better story that he’s just dying to tell, I would be wrong to deprive myself of it. First allow me to state — and this preamble should be repeated word for word as my conclusion — that as unbelievable as it may seem, I swear my little anecdote is true: the Spanish Jesuits were for a short time suspected of having painted the Altamira cave paintings themselves in order to prove that all art described as Paleolithic was nothing but fraud and hoax. The scientific dating of the paintings nipped this notion in the bud, but it was nonetheless based on a reasonable assessment of Jesuitic malice and was suggested, indirectly, by the tumultuous religious feeling that overcame the first visitors to the cave. Will our museums — those great cathedrals of silence, respect, and boredom in which we no longer await anything but God — one day produce the same effect?)

Unless we find humanity’s memory preserved in some cavernous fold of space-time — which cannot be excluded — and if the show we are putting on is being transmitted at this very moment to our distant descendants, well then, my clairvoyance is rooting them to their spot — so unless everything is recorded, the meaning of these ceremonies will remain unknown. We always penetrate these sumptuously painted sanctuaries with the vague discomfort one feels in religious sites devoted to foreign divinities of whose rules and regulations we are ignorant: should we keep on our hat and take off our shoes, or the opposite, or keep on all three, or take them all off, and in what order? We are terrified of committing a sacrilege and have the shameful sense of being there as tourists, with no other motive than to satisfy our curiosity, which is ferreting about everywhere — a rat-chasing dog would be better behaved — and we idiotically lift our heads every time the faithful bow theirs. This is the true reason, the only reason, I am reluctant to take up my duties in the cave: I don’t believe I have the right to violate this sanctuary. What are they asking of me! It would be an insult to the faith of our ancestors. Who are we to declare null and void or abstruse the Great Spirit on whom they called as they were perhaps slitting their sons’ throats and banging their heads against the rock? Let’s not forget that they were not as far removed as we are from the origins of the world and that in all likelihood they had available to them reliable, easily verifiable information on the subject that we are lacking today.

WE KNOW how it happens: some children are playing hide-and-seek in the undergrowth, the most quick-witted one slips behind some fallen rocks; then, as his pursuers draw near, he goes deeper and deeper between the blocks of stone; before long he is forced to bow his head, curl his spine, fall onto all fours, but the route is clearly not designed for mammals. He advances by crawling into this narrow tunnel and suddenly, forgetting the game, he lets out a cry of surprise that echoes for ages, his child’s voice reverberating triumphantly as if he will never run out of breath. His playmates come running and they in turn discover the tunnel’s entrance and are swallowed up by it, heads bowed, backs rounded, on elbows and knees, on bellies, they undergo the same metamorphoses, they crawl up to him and their clamor, filled with wonder, is echoed at a deeper pitch by the invisible choirs of the cave; this is, in fact, how things happen, or else a hunter — a long, shiny rifle carrying a nasty little man over its shoulder — this hunter suddenly sees his dog disappear, suddenly he no longer sees his dog, the ground has opened beneath his dog, the earth has absorbed his damp dog, what has happened to his dog, did he ever really have a dog, did he dream up his dog, his old companion of a dog was ultimately but one more illusion, suddenly annihilated, the lovely dream vanished, how good it would be, how convenient for hunting to have a dog, yes, he should have a dog, he must get a dog, but then he hears moaning, a plaintive yelp very close by, his dog is lying at the bottom of a pit obscured by ferns, his good, indisputable old canine belonging to a nasty, cynical little man is there, at the bottom of this pit into which the man heavily descends, grabbing at roots, bothered by his rifle now pointing at him and slapping him with its butt since it is not loaded; at last he manages to reach the animal and sees that the shaft continues in a slight incline and leads to a larger cavity. This is, in fact, how things come to pass, unless the day’s hero happens to be an innocent hiker, himself fallen to the bottom of the pit, perhaps even a gamekeeper, or a lumberjack, a sap or mushroom collector, whatever. This is how things happened and the Pales cave was discovered some sixty years ago.

Others will be discovered. History is not made everywhere. There are secret places where prehistoric time accumulates. These underground galleries are spared the hubbub of the surface; they are today as they were fifteen thousand years ago, as if nothing had occurred in the world save some minor or not so minor geological events. The bringing to light of these sanctuaries suddenly overshadows History and its humble chronologies; it then becomes clear that we have exaggerated the importance of dynasties and revolutions: we belong to this same era, of which the future will be the judge, an era in which man more or less simultaneously discovered fire and the atom, when he learned to domesticate animals, overcome gravity, polish stone and vulcanize rubber, to write words and open roads, when he led grand expeditions on land and sea and in space, all the way to the moon, an era that was fleeting but fertile and that witnessed, one after the other, the invention of bronze and the motion picture camera, where both cave painting and abstract painting had their day, not to mention the steam engine, the universal joint, electricity, the wheel, the brush, the computer, infrared, and the harpoon, all of which contributed at the same moment to increasing the possibilities of man. It is an era whose unity we still have trouble comprehending and whose end we do not yet see; we are smack in the middle of it, but in all likelihood it will be considered as the dawn of humanity by our distant descendants before these descendants some thirty thousand years hence will in turn be put in the same category — primitive populations — by the newcomers, because, as we know, the past recedes, closes in around the origins, and every morning the child speaks of the previous day as the time when he was little.

If I were to believe Professor Glatt, the most authoritarian authority in this field, the figures found in the Pales cave are evidence of an intermittent artistic activity that covers — from the first engraved lines through the final paintings — a period of approximately twenty thousand years. At the end of the Magdalenian era, a rock slide partially obstructed the entrance to the cave, which was then rediscovered only twelve thousand years later, under the circumstances related above. At first it was thought to be a matter of a very simple cavity, a vestibule of twenty-five square meters decorated with three large ochre and black figures and a few smaller animals, mostly merely partially sketched, then an oval section of a passageway that opened to the right onto another chamber with a few paintings and then continued down a gentle slope until it reached a pit filled with fallen blocks of stone: the impasse. An attempt at clearing the way was made without much optimism, but these thorny efforts paid off and the path that was finally cleared gave access to the entire karstic network of Pales: six kilometers, nine chambers on three levels connected by numerous, sinuous galleries pierced with fireplaces, niches, diverticula, some of which were wide and passable, others which were steep or uneven, strewn with muddy potholes and imposing stalagmitic concretions; fortunately the slightest detail of this labyrinth was depicted on the map tacked in four places on the alveolar-like living room wall, five centimeters thick if you count the two centimeters of wallpaper glue that is generously spread on it and that acts as an insulating compound producing the occasional bas-relief effect where it blisters the off-white wallpaper that is slightly grainy so as to simulate roughcast, or that’s the idea, with which the walls of the adjacent dining room are also covered and at the back of which a glazed door joined with scrap wood opens onto a highly functional kitchen with laminated upper and lower shelves and eight square meters of pink wall tiling around a counter space with a double stainless steel sink and a dish rack, an oven with four electric burners topped by an efficient range hood nourished mainly by spaghetti with tomato sauce, just like me when it leaves me any, whereas the refrigerator stands on the opposite side, revving its engine and sometimes even starting to move, but it stalls immediately, never pushing its desire for adventure very far, and always returning from each of its journeys with fresh butter.

Let’s also retrace our steps, let’s take the corridor through which we arrived, but in the opposite direction, and return to the vestibule from which we set off; look down for a moment at the sedimentary rock on which we are treading, composed of quartz grains held together by a solid chalky cement, magnificent enameled sandstone tiles, thirty-three by thirty-three centimeters, laid out on the entire ground floor — so easy to take care of, ladies, that it is a real joy; they say that Cinderella gave up going to the ball in order to mop it and that her sisters were green and yellow with envy. At the rear of the vestibule, to the right of the corridor, let us pause in front of the prepainted flush door that leads to the cellar, where various objects that were collected in the cave are stored and not yet inventoried: another thankless task to which I am duty-bound. In the meantime, the public is not allowed in, step back please, I do not make the rules, let us please observe the proper flow of the tour. The second story is also worth a glance. The spiral staircase awaits us and only us to take flight — with its golden color and the stylishness of Scandinavian pine, it feels more like a schooner that heads to sea, spins around, and drops us safe and sound on the looped carpet of the landing, out of which branches another corridor with its tree-structured logic: to the left, a locked former guest room that now serves the dual purpose of junk room and office library, and is therefore doubly dusty; and the unavoidable small square room at the far end of the passageway with its glazed white porcelain bowl, à la salon de thé, and its double lid that should be closed, quickly please, before you leave, and then about-face! To the left again, but the other left this time, we can admire the separate room that holds the tub whose rosy-tiled nudity, barely veiled by a hanging bathrobe, discreetly echoes the kitchen wall covering — you remember it, the soul of a house is revealed through these subtle relations — the tub is in fact of the same rosy pink, but I have been forever loath to take baths, I have the very unpleasant sensation of drowning in a coffin and I prefer to use the flexible showerhead attached to the big mixing faucet whose red and blue discs are reversed, as is often the case, you just need to know; it is also these tiny, touching details that reveal a house’s soul. Finally, across from the unwelcome guest room but communicating directly, morning and evening, with the tub room, here is my bedroom, cluttered by a double bed, you have to wonder for what and especially for whom, with its five smooth, white walls — in a bedroom there are only ceilings — and its floor overrun with shoddy carpeting, and as sole furnishing, besides this half-useless conjugal bed, a wardrobe with a mirror, bandy-legged in my presence and which I intend to whitewash, brick over — I am one of those people who does not know how to behave in front of a mirror — and a chair sitting at its table near the window: view on the cave. Above the bed, Boborikine hung a reproduction of the headless woman, one of the cave’s most astonishing engravings. Let’s get out of here. We are heading back downstairs. The spiral staircase sinks into the wax polish as if it were butter, do not let go of the banister, you’ll slip.

IT’S A FIGURE engraved on a protrusion from the rock face so as to accentuate the bas-relief effect obtained by the line’s depth. Thus the stomach, drawn with conviction, uses the rock’s convexity to become even rounder above the three incisions of the pubic triangle, suggesting the lopsided walk of the hypertrophied pelvis, but then we hit a wall, the small of the back spreads as it disappears into the rock, the massive thighs are joined all the way down to the knee, then the line becomes less defined, fainter, as if distracted, the feet are barely sketched at all, two crude ovals; likewise the hands look more like stumps, but the arms are magnificent, the right one stretched along the body, the left, raised as if to make some sign, and the shoulder with its perfect outline, clean and sharp, would lodge itself so perfectly beneath its own armpit that our mind almost manages to imagine the voluptuousness of this impossible caress; the breasts, slightly shrunken, strabic, nipples off-center, are only hanging by a thread from the too-frail torso, two breasts disproportionate to the rest of the body, to the rest of the world, to babies’ hunger and man’s desire — what if she really were the victorious rebel woman? Freed from her role as mother and lover, not because of her body’s staunch refusal or her immolation in God, or the way she was purposefully made ugly; not in defense of her childish virginity, nor through the agony of her flesh, the length of her sharp nails, the coolness of her gaze, the arrogance of her words, the self-conscious concealment of her curves, but through their very excess, their total blossoming, their triumphant expansiveness, refusing all physical limits, overflowing her edges, she seems to defy the little sucking lips of infants, the small, frantic hands of men and their fever that is too short-lived to set her enormous body on fire.

Nonetheless, her head was neglected. Either the artist was saving for last this bit of psychology ever more difficult to define and was interrupted while working, or else he hesitated about which face to choose until the day he died. Or possibly he never intended to finish his character, considering perhaps that it was complete as it was, that any addition would be superfluous or redundant, that the main points were there, that the message had come through, that a head in any event would have paled beside those breasts. Another hypothesis deserves our consideration: several animals in the cave are also incomplete, lacking eyes or paws, some sinuous lines perhaps representing acephalous snakes, the felines’ jaws are in one piece, locked, the upper teeth fused to the lower like those columns that form when a stalactite and a stalagmite meet, an encounter as unpredictable as it is inevitable, in fact, because nothing can stop a stalactite and a stalagmite from meeting once the process is begun; perhaps it was chance that aligned them vertically with one another but its contribution stops there, the rest of the story has nothing to do with its whims. Any coincidence of this kind is in short the result of a series of causes and effects that obey a cold logic whose line of reasoning would allow one, by means of deduction, to foresee the final consequences. The initial involvement of chance is in fact an illusion; chance has no more reality than the origin of the winds, the flow of this narrative is much better controlled than it seems, its inflexibility drives me to despair. In the end, the obstacles I put in its path turn out to be essential episodes, the story assimilates and integrates everything that could lead it astray, there’s no way out for me, no way to tear myself away from it, no more than it is possible to catch a glimpse of yourself from behind in a mirror by spinning around quickly on your heels; it fails every time. But by a hair. I’ll keep trying.

The bison, hornless, will be less dangerous for the hunter; the horse, hoofless, will not escape him; the jawless wildcat will not rip him to shreds. We can surmise that the woman’s head was omitted for the same reason. The cave artist was already counting on the magical efficacy of representation to establish his supremacy. He reorganized the world according to his needs and desires. He added nothing new to it; his first revolt led him toward destruction — later they would build. He eliminated a lot, there was an urgency to do away with everything that threatened his life, everything that spelled danger and that challenged his power had to be torn out, removed, disposed of. His painting, destined to weaken his prey with its magic, failed in its aims but was in itself the real miracle: through his painting he in effect took over the world. From then on we see him extracting juice from stones. He changed the color of the water. And the light was what he made of it.

The headless woman by herself fills a narrow recess of the upper gallery, christened an alcove on the map, where the artist clearly must have also been by himself, with just enough space to work; you cannot drive a flint into a limestone wall without a little elbow room. But why did he choose this site when the neighboring chambers, much vaster and more comfortable, have not been decorated? Was he working unbeknownst to his fellow creatures, flying in the face of some taboo? Did the animal art that prevailed exclude all human representation, considered pointless or anecdotal? Stupid questions, obviously; in fact no one has ever asked a really good question, whatever the subject. Because we cannot escape our own system of explaining the world, all our alleged questions are in reality tentative but peremptory answers transposed in interrogative form to allow for dialogue that, surprise, surprise, will hardly advance knowledge. What remains is the sincere, infinite amazement from before the questions. And I find quite astonishing the contradictory relationship between the almost aggressive sensuality of the headless woman and the way she is shamefully hidden in a hole. She will be the first one I visit as soon as I enter the cave.

YET IT WOULD be wrong to believe that nothing happened during prehistoric times. Nothing but our faulty memory is to blame. We erroneously fill in its gaps by imagining that humanity slowly disengaged itself from the animal world, perhaps by recruiting and then crossbreeding the most intelligent members of each species, or at least that man made use of all this time to distinguish himself from the others, a primate refined from generation to generation, the son having nothing to learn from his father then outstripped by his own offspring, the mental age of members of the same family being inversely proportional to the real age of each of them, until that last kid, who finally entered History, founder of all traditions who for the first time sired children less resourceful than their father but to whom he gave an excellent education and who became men worthy of this name, and then old soldiers, what a magnificent adventure.

You know your History. We have the documents. The documents confirm one another. Often they repeat each other. Thus we can be sure. Reading these texts is no doubt a bit boring, precisely because they repeat each other, because the truth is unique. Of course you can notice a few variations from one text to another, the story is not always exactly the same, the authors of the different texts sometimes disagree over details. But it must be said in fairness that we can find our bearings from one to the next, everything we read in one text will be confirmed by another. Thus we can be sure. An episode read in one text had already appeared in another with which we were familiar, and there are other texts in the pipeline that will be certain not to omit it, although they might not always put it back where it belongs, for sometimes authors disagree about the chronology of events. But the events took place, the facts are there, always the same, which is the main thing. What does it matter, after all, where you situate one episode of history, as long as it is there? The authors make it a point of honor not to disappoint us in this matter, the reader’s expectation is rewarded, for the reader would hardly appreciate reading one version of history that differs too much from the ones he has already read and that all agree to such an extent that they form but one, the same good old story every time, the magnificent adventure, and so we can rest assured.

Whereas we are sure of absolutely nothing when it comes to prehistoric times, we know nothing, or almost nothing. We are obliged to invent. There can be, as we’ve seen with the headless woman, contradictory interpretations of what the cave paintings mean, but it can also be tricky just to identify what they are supposed to represent and this gives rise to merciless arguments as well. I caught wind of a scuffle that lasted for years between Glatt and one of his colleagues, Professor Opole, over a partial profile of a quadruped. The former believed it to be a hornless caprine whereas his adversary saw in it an antlerless cervid. Insults were exchanged, the expertise of the one was challenged by the other, and vice versa, as were then the morals of their respective mothers and wives; they came to blows, slaps, fisticuffs, they rolled on the ground, pulled each other’s hair, bit each other on the ear, split one another’s lips, gave each other black eyes, broke each other’s noses, attempted to strangle one another, smashed each other’s ribs, and finally the antlerless cervid was left for dead. And all that simply to clarify a single point of prehistoric times. Is not this period deserving of our attention?

It begins, then, with the appearance of man, but this great moment is itself difficult to date: what was, among all these hominids, the first humanly successful humanoid, the fabulous apparition in question, the ancestor worthy of us? There have been so many approaches, so many sketches of the definitive — or presumed definitive — figure, so many projects that seemed to hold water abandoned a hair’s breadth from success, so many two-legged bodies, misshapen, heavyset, hunchbacked, plausible, so many skulls poised atop them — ovoid or rounded, flattened, receding, real heads made for hat-wearing, that were in the end sent packing; in sum, there were so many humanoid creatures before man, creatures that were no longer apes, or not yet apes, that it would be foolhardy to claim to be able to tell man apart from the others with any precision. Besides, these creatures did not disappear from one day to the next the minute exclusive and very selective humankind was picked out of the lot; life went on for them too, their own evolution continued, they long remained contemporaries of Homo sapiens sapiens, and — I know this hypothesis will upset those of my fellow creatures who are my superiors — they may even have survived him; my opinion is that we ourselves are today the descendants of a species related to and rival of the human species that was annihilated and whose prestige and privileges we have usurped and whose civilized manners we ape; lice know what they’re doing, so do I, everywhere I go I see only chimpanzees slogging away, and the more serious they are, the more ridiculous they are, dressed nonetheless as if they were men: religious, sentimental, domestic like men used to be, but awkwardly, brutally, unrelentingly carried away by their ape logic, exceeding all moderation, their smiles swallowed by grimaces, their gestures too brusque, and every word laboriously learned wasted in fits of rage. I am ready to defend this hypothesis as a true theory: we got rid of man, then took his place, and I can prove it: never would man, endowed with the aptitudes both to reason and to laugh, the latter to counteract the former, never would man thus enlightened have entered History.

THE RED thumbtack is preventing me from concentrating. I find it impossible to focus fully on the map, hypnotized like the rabbit trying to find its way through the puzzle-maze that quickly learns by heart the only route leading to its carrot, on the upper right of the page — just try to train it to take another route. Yet I must conscientiously explore every direction on paper before I venture into the cave, I will not wander about at random, if you think I would, you don’t know me, I’d probably get lost and never come out. How could one not lose one’s way in the twisting, turning, infinitely branching galleries, so dangerous it’s as if they’re booby-trapped, with sudden slopes in the ground or ceiling and the unanticipated retrenchment of the practicable path between the rough walls that scrape my shoulders and sides and bruise my bones, and the passageways, dark despite the electricity that’s been installed, and the rolling mills, the swallow holes, the ventilation shafts where I slip feetfirst, dead already, ignorant of what lies in wait on the other side, perhaps the void, a hole, a precipitous drop, perhaps the tumbled, crumbled wall of a blind alley, or else a bright, airy room where the sun abseils through a narrow shaft and cools off in a natural lake, miraculously round, that glimmers more appropriately, and tinkles like glass when suddenly a fat, warm drop falls from the dark vault pierced by the violet sparks of the stalactites; you’ll see that this thunderstorm, petrified for millennia, will awaken today, now: it’s breaking out behind me, I run aimlessly, shoulders hunched, back rounded; count the ridges on my carapace to see how old I am, I think I’m retracing my steps, all I do is step on my own feet, a child slips away from me and climbs up the steep path ahead of him on all fours while the old man for whom I was also responsible slides down into the lower galleries, I form a crowd, the lions are let loose, I spread myself in all of panic’s directions, but the lake in spate catches up to me wherever I am, submerging me, my lungs explode, my rosy cheeks fade, I float with the eyeless, memoryless transparent fish, the last living contemporaries of all the fossils, liquid specters of the Precambrian Era that still haunt the watery depths. I belong among them, from now on their future is mine, and all that because I ventured into the cave without proper preparation: madness. Obviously I shall do no such thing until I know the premises perfectly. I shall devote the time it takes to a preliminary study of the map. I shall learn how to move about the cave on paper, as if I were at home, eyes shut, hands behind my back, with steady steps, a blind homeowner circumventing every obstacle, stepping over crevices thanks to the reflexes I’ll have acquired, all will be second nature. But none of this will be possible unless I manage to get hold of a fourth yellow thumbtack.

Boborikine’s drawers were not emptied. His personal effects were moved, linens, books, and those small odds and ends, the hideous ornamental knick-knacks (except for a one-eyed frog made of shells that I threw back into the water), but neither the drawers in the living room highboy nor the one in the bedroom nightstand were cleaned out. I shall therefore have to itemize their contents and the inevitable enumeration presaged here will end as soon as I have found the yellow thumbtack I need, which could happen very quickly if, for example, I were to find one in the first drawer of the highboy, buried beneath the knot of rubber bands, three green, three blue, one red, one white — and there truly is something poignant about the chance convergence of so many unforeseeable destinies. But no, no thumbtack under there, just a paper clip. Let’s carry on with the inventory. Nothing I remove from the drawer will go back in there; the lot will wind up in the wastebasket so that should my efforts bear no fruit I will at least have gained a speck more space for my own little belongings.

So, this first drawer, in addition to the rubber bands and the paper clip, harbored the following: another paper clip, two postcards (Mimizan-Plage, in black and white; and Breton Gastronomy, a color print of an oyster platter where purple is the dominant hue), both signed Angèle, who had sunny weather in the Landes, and, the following summer, sunny weather in Brittany too; who swam every day in the Landes and, the following summer, every day in Brittany too; apparently Angèle knew how to preserve her mystery better than Madame de Sévigné and, for lack of additional information, I must sadly leave her — and for once I had a fine specimen of a female character. Additionally: a tiny promotional writing pad (“At home or abroad, always carry your flagon of Lemonbalm Water by Carmes Boyer: Three Centuries of Renown”), a sample-size flask of Lilas perfume (70°), a worm-eaten hazelnut, a few candies in their stained-glass wrappers (the Eucharist as told to children), three spears of chewed fibers that were once either pencils or asparaguses, a red plastic billfold containing an embossed aluminum Saint Christopher crossing a river carrying the Baby Jesus in swaddling clothes at an age when one doesn’t yet know how to walk on water, and precise instructions in case of a serious accident (“I am a Catholic: please get me a priest if I am dying”), a small box of Solingen razor blades (0.08mm), the missing eye of the frog (I call it a winkle), a Sanex toothpick in its sheath, another hazelnut eaten by a worm (the same worm?), a mouthful of meat that was spit out (the remains of a delicious pink rubber pig given to Boborikine by a gas station attendant), a two-centime coin (once upon a time you could fill your pockets in a candy store in exchange for this peanut sum), a watch that had stopped at 3:31 (and not a single second has since penetrated its impermeable watchcase; not a thing happened after that), and finally a tube of glue, but flat and dry like they all are, you swiftly squander your saliva when you try to find adhesion, cohesion, I know something about all that, I too shall have my place among all these outdated, broken-down objects — in the wastebasket. The archaeologist’s work must always be done again. He dies amid the ruins he has exhumed. All the dust that flew out of the drawer settles on my shoulders: an as-yet-thin layer of sediment, which will grow thicker, under which I shall disappear.

Something sticks in the second drawer, the wood must have warped or else a squirrel hid a walnut between the plywood slats; I keep trying, bracing myself, hands on the handles of the highgirl who wants to be coaxed for form’s sake and is dragging her feet as if I were pulling her against her will out on the dance floor, that’s all she was waiting for, we waltz around clumsily for a moment, and then, with scant ceremony, I waltz her back to where she was and thrust my lumbering dance partner against the wall, she’ll budge no more, I’ve wasted my time with her, my hand gropes around in the drawer that at last has partially opened: empty. Let’s catch our breath a moment.

After a lifetime of experience and daily practice, we instinctively expend the precise amount of energy we need to open a drawer, but the difficulties I just experienced have completely distorted this sense of moderation acquired over the years, assimilated by nerves and muscles, so that the third drawer yanked too brutally goes off the rails and falls on my feet. It’s painful, but I’ve read Epictetus’s Art of Living.

So now we enter the third drawer where other old junk is piled pell-mell: a skein of tangled green wool from an unfinished piece of knitting, abandoned after only four rows, or else mischievously undone and begun anew, then undone again and taken up again (this was no doubt the lifetime bond between Boborikine’s mother and her cat), a holy picture from a first communion illustrating the Annunciation (this episode would be turned into a play. I never saw it, but everyone knows the theater’s old ploys. It’s easy to imagine Joseph coming home unannounced, with a panicked Mary having just enough time to shove Gabriel into a closet), with Angèle’s childish signature on the back and a sweet dedication to her uncle (Angèle’s character is taking on depth in spite of everything; with the passing pages we are getting to know her, and we’ll wind up growing fond of this niece of Boborikine’s), a champagne cork, a yellow, perforated botanic label (missing the wire bracelet that wounds plants’ ankles) bearing an inscription written in pencil: Ornithogalum. Some will furtively recognize the furtive Eleven o’clock lady (flowers have a nickname reserved for butterflies and a scientific name for lepidopterists), a fat blue die showing six so I’m speeding up; a key chain, a button, a sugar cube, an ant that won’t go far with my thumb on its back (besides, the ant that attempts a raid on its own is a fool); a tiny pair of scissors with its bird’s beak and appetite, a porcelain egg from the time when doorknobs were still laid and each hatching promised a real surprise — let’s break it. I could surely extract many other belongings from this drawer, dig deep in it to my heart’s content, I’m nowhere near the bottom, but I already know I’ll find all the gold in the world before the yellow thumbtack I need, and what’s more, the wastebasket is full.

THE INDEX fingernail is made for this: by pulling off the pliant top of the thumbtack, I eliminate the problem, that red stain will never again make its impression on my retina, the headless thumbtack, golden, no longer clashes as badly with the other three. At last I shall be able to study the map of the cave seriously. Man’s talons are meant for this kind of small domestic task, but he cannot count on them to dig out his warren. So the karstic network of Pales must not be attributed to the Paleolithic artists who used it, even if they did in fact widen some of the passageways by hand, as you can see from the clods of clay pushed up against the cave walls. In reality, a network of this kind is formed by the combined action of water and air, whose corrosive and solvent properties we sometimes experience on our own bodies. Here comes the explanation. It promises to be rather boring since karstic phenomena are produced too slowly to create what could strictly speaking be called entertainment, even if their representation in fast-forward would unquestionably make us forget the formidable storms at sea, because the rock reinforced with ore that we so casually trample underfoot is powerless against the waters sharpened like daggers that suddenly seep between the joints of the stratifications and rapidly dissolve the calcium carbonate that held it together; then it’s a river’s hydraulic pressure that devours the stone and carves out corridors into which air — full of carbon dioxide and pernicious organic acids that attack in turn — immediately rushes, and frost dynamites everything in its path, everything explodes, the fractured rock crumbles, easy as pie, the flood clears out the rubble or sends it into the depths before abandoning the network, which has now become practicable, consolidated by the sedimentation of clay and silt, propped up by tall limestone concretions, thin translucent columns or massive pillars; the painters are expected, they can go in now, torches in hand, they enter the labyrinth. As soon as they have found a chamber to their liking, they light the juniper wicks of their bruloirs (150 grams of tallow can stoke a sun), the dancing flames and shadows on the walls will evoke living shapes that the artists will capture for all eternity, whereas our cold light from electric bulbs freezes our imaginations; it is implacable, disapproving, the eye of God suspended from the ceiling by a wire — and here comes that thumbtack I had thought I was rid of, turning its dazzling tip on me again and pinning me there, on the upper right-hand corner of the map where I’ve no reason to be.

It is obvious now that I’ll make no progress as long as the four thumbtacks are not identical. This maniacal need for symmetry and conformity is justified nonetheless: it’s a matter of countering the intricate lines of the map — which herald a delicate journey — with the rigor of a geometry of partitions in order to avoid overflow and contain the drawing in its rectangular (70cm x 95cm) frame. Circumscribed by these conventional boundaries, the terrifying subterranean labyrinth no longer inspires anything but a retrospective anxiety — like the harrowing adventure that fits in a book that fits in a pocket — because everything is at last restored to order. We play somewhat loosely with scales to bring what exceeds us back to more modest proportions: we believe, for example, that the future can be read in tarot cards. We possess planet Earth, it belongs to us, we are the indisputable masters of it, that is, we reign over a world of miniatures and realities reduced to our size — none of it exists. The whale we know is not a whale, it is nothing like a whale, the real whale is much, much bigger. Our whale is as little like a whale as possible. But all this labeling and miniaturizing must continually be renewed. An illusion that is not maintained cannot survive — the growing plant will never take the flowerpot into consideration. At the first flagging of our vigilance, everything comes undone, suddenly the rosebush is a vile bramble and dogs give birth to wolves, even our marvelous inventions attest only to our weaknesses, the glass had too much sand in its eyes not to wind up blind, cities cave in, the attics are in the cellars, what should beat no longer beats, circulate no longer circulates, one moment of inattention was all it took and the world became itself again, perfectly round and bound just as it was in the Quaternary when we got here, by accident or design, perhaps forced to flee the large celestial cube stuffed with electronics where we used to live comfortably, tapping away at our keyboards. Alas, this wild land on which we washed up was not ready to welcome a civilization as refined as ours and the efforts made ever since to introduce it have been in vain, despite a few recent small successes that nonetheless have nothing definitive about them and are at the mercy of one second of distraction, as has just been proven, the truth being that we did not know how to adapt and we never will, for to do so we would have to regress intellectually in order to carve out a place for ourselves among the brutes in these mountain or desert regions. This is why we prefer pretending to believe in our visions of the world, which are pure hallucinations, or else they are delirious mental conceptions, it must be said, but which, in the end and despite everything, constitute a universe, our own, whose verisimilitude depends solely on the precision of our encyclopedias and atlases, on our liturgies, our classifications, our maps. The golden thumbtack creates a treacherous disturbance, it is a bolt that fails, a rung that gives way, a hole in the hull, watch out.

I haul myself upstairs, despite my leg; I climb the steps with the strength of my arms — this route henceforth will bear my name. We still have one drawer to rummage through in my bedroom, the night-table drawer now surrenders its precious information about my predecessor Boborikine. The presence of a small box of matches, for example, allows you to establish that he had mastered fire, and that of a needle with an eye, that he dressed in clothes that were sewn. He had a sense of the sacred, his worship of the fertility goddess is evidenced by the queen of spades with hypertrophied breasts from a pornographic deck of cards. He knew the properties of plants, herbs that heal and those that cure insomnia, their dosages and the pharmaceutical methods of packaging in flasks, tubes, or boxes. He cared about the way he looked. His nail file is almost completely smooth, polished by wear, and his comb has caught a few gray strands. He had a strong sense of family; a strip of four standard ID photos shows us four little blond girls each wearing a tiny bandage on her forehead. The first is sticking out her tongue and slanting her eyes with her thumbs; the second is puffing out her cheeks; the third is grimacing horribly; but the last one — smiling, pretty, slightly wounded — can only be the famous Angèle, his favorite niece, less foolish than the other three. But let’s avoid jumping to conclusions. We don’t know what value he placed on these objects — was this his treasure or the accumulated scraps of a richer life led elsewhere? Some of these vestiges could in fact lead us astray. Sometimes things are deflected from their usual function by a user caught off guard or who’s simply being inventive, when upon examination they don’t turn out to be very different from what you thought based solely on their appearance. Coconuts cannot be ostrich eggs because they contain goat’s milk. I myself learned today, at my age, with the stupefaction that always accompanies this sort of late onset disillusionment, while the beginnings of a smile of commiseration can be seen on the lips of those who always knew — but we are all missing, inexplicably, some piece of information known the world over, or rather something obvious that remains inexplicably unknown to us and to us alone until the day when the scales fall from our eyes and finally there is light — I discovered only today that tiny matchboxes are in reality bursting with thumbtacks, red, blue, green, white, and yellow.

PROFESSOR Glatt steps in. This time I’ve gone too far, I’m not getting anywhere. Which one is it? Either I’ve gone too far or I’m not getting anywhere. The professor has to choose. How can I be going too far if I’m not getting anywhere? It’s either one or the other. One cannot, in all sincerity, reproach me for not getting anywhere and going too far at one and the same time — it would be disingenuous. I’m taking too long to open the cave, now that’s a criticism that could be leveled at me, that’s something I would have trouble denying. However, I have my reasons. It seems the way I am carrying out my duties is being judged more and more harshly on high. Even Professor Glatt, who usually takes my side, did not appreciate the thumbtack episode. Couldn’t I simply have pulled the plastic heads off the three yellow thumbtacks to find the requisite harmony? Obviously, yes; and if I didn’t do it, it’s because I had my reasons. What do they know on high about how my work is progressing? How do they measure progress? Still, they cannot be unaware of the fact that a story of this sort never begins abruptly, that it is impossible to know or to locate the beginning of a story of this sort before knowing the ending: it is the end of a story that illuminates in retrospect the phases of its evolution and that allows one to infer its origins. These origins, however, are at times much older than one suspected. In truth, there is but one origin and that is why a story of this sort can never come to an end; the same origin continually gives rise to new stories without, for all that, cutting itself off from all the other stories going on at the same time: the real interest of the flint tools dug up by Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes (born in Rethel in 1788, died in 1868) at Menchecourt or Moulin Quignon lies not in the fact that they are examples of Paleolithic tools among so many other, identical ones in our possession, but rather in the precise fact that they were discovered by the historical father of prehistoric sciences, and this is what makes them so significant.

So do not talk to me about dates, deadlines, passing time, the approaching tourist season; do not tell me I must get down to it quickly. Besides, I am already down to it. I am in the middle of it. If I weren’t, where would I be? This story began well before me, four billion years ago, about four billion years ago to be exact; it will carry on without me when I’m gone, with periods of respite that in no way will mean it has come to an end, as one could perhaps erroneously think. Some guy loses his precious knife, complains, gets annoyed, retraces his steps in vain, gives up looking for it, and two million years later, Jacques Boucher de Crèvecœur de Perthes’s foot stumbles upon it. Ever since, this flint has been in our archaeological collections, another respite before future adventures during which its characteristics as a universal tool will be rediscovered, why not, unless it is swept away with the rubble of the demolished museum where it was exhibited and returned once more to the earth, as if its mineral nature took over at regular intervals: we domesticate animals whose lives are shorter than ours — at thirty, man begins his third dog’s life — but it is not for us to make plans for stones.

(The Pales cave is famous for, among other things, its little black horse from the Steppe that appears at the back of a natural recess in the cave wall and disappears just as suddenly, according to the season and the climatic conditions. It is frightened of the damp that darkens the rock. It is at its best on dry ground. If there is a series of rainy summers in the region, it might not show itself for several years. In contrast, it remains visible as long as harsh winters follow summers without rain. It is in fact unpredictable, like the sky itself. Sometimes it is gone for so long that you believe it has left for good, erased forever. And then suddenly it reappears, and not only is it as distinct as it was before, but it even seems to be in better condition, refreshed, more clearly delineated. You think it has left prehistoric times for good. Wrong. It goes back there, and once again you are thrown.)

What’s more, the extreme fragility of certain paintings is yet another reason to protest the premature reopening of the site; Professor Glatt cannot dispute that. As long as effective measures of protection have not been put in place, is it really responsible to expose the cave’s frescoes to anthropic erosion and other human ravages? It would make sense to put in guardrails or dig trenches around the painted cave walls, which, according to the most recent reports, are so friable in spots that a finger can easily bury itself in them up to its second knuckle. Several clay panels were literally reworked in this way, behind Crescenzo’s or Boborikine’s back, by those fanatics who cannot come near a piece of art without touching it, as if they hoped to have some part in its everlastingness or leave a trace of their passage on this earth in a place where all traces are reverently preserved, even at the risk of being called iconoclasts and cursed for all eternity. Why not have a little electric train running through the galleries? When visitors ride on it they would not be tempted to sign the paintings. Nonetheless, such a measure would scarcely lessen the negative influence these ladies and gentlemen have on the temperature and hygrometry of the cave. By dispersing with their every movement a swarm of organic matter mixed with the dust from their clothing — produced primarily by the incessant decomposition of their live tissues — these same ladies and gentlemen promote the development of bacteria, fungus, and algae; and their whistles of admiration are spears of carbonic acid that pierce the bison’s flanks. (The painter’s breath was already corroding the figures his hand was forming at the very moment of their creation, for breathing man cannot look at the work he is creating and that will outlast him without terror, and his ambition to live on through it comes up against a vague, conflicting desire to destroy it, it is in his power to do so, he is still the stronger of the two. This is why works of art also end up dying, worn out or destroyed: they carried this death wish within from the moment they were conceived — but I only opened this parenthesis so I could wind up here, and here I am, so I’m slamming it shut.)

I would feel terrible chasing you away, Professor, but I have my work cut out for me and your stopping by will do nothing to expedite the reopening of the cave. Of course our conversations are quite interesting. I enjoy them immensely but they disrupt my schedule. The explanations you want from me, your questions I must answer: all this sidetracks me. I’m not getting anywhere. And now, duty calls. Climb up there and tell them that their ideas about me are wrong, that I am very busy despite what it may seem. I have already done a great deal of work. But I do not think this is the right time to reopen the cave. Besides, take a look at the key you gave me. It’s too big, too heavy, one of those keys with the balls of a jailer knocking against his thigh, I don’t believe this key capable of reopening the gate it locked. It doesn’t seem to be at all the kind of key to retrace its steps or change its mind, a key like this can only be used once, to close up, a key like this is one that locks for good, if you ask me, a key like this is a key that bolts the door and throws away the key.

HE DEFINITELY must have been seated when he drew his big polychrome mammoth. Then he would have stood up on tiptoe or more likely perched himself on a rock or the back of an assistant, or on a clayey protuberance made expressly for this purpose, or on a rudimentary platform. In any event, he would have constructed all these hypotheses himself before choosing the best one to reach the ledge and paint the heads of those two ibex thereon with a dab of pink ochre, for it is obvious that the three figures were drawn by the same hand. The photographic reproductions in my possession leave no room for doubt. Each artist already had his characteristic style, easily identifiable despite the motifs and techniques shared by all. I would readily attribute the female aurochs and the rearing horse of the last chamber on the third level to this same painter, as well as the line of mammoths filing out of it, taking a sharp turn without losing their stride and straying into a cul-de-sac. The headless woman, on the other hand, truly seems to be the sole work of its creator, unless perhaps the figure of a bear sketched on a stalagmitic pillar was also his, but it is now partially obscured by calcite flowstones and it is difficult to tell. The catalogue of reproductions doesn’t omit a single one of the cave’s paintings. Animal figures predominate — finished or not, at times just rough outlines — because the catalogue lists twenty-eight horses, twenty-six mammoths, twenty bison, sixteen ibex, sixteen reindeer, seven aurochs, six felines, five fish (salmonid), two elk, two stags, a bear, a woolly rhino, a boar, a wolf, a bird, more than one hundred other mammals that are unfinished, or botched, or clumsy, or damaged, over whose nature prehistorians argue. There is even some question of a human profile that according to some is probably the hindquarters of a bison and, according to others, the only example of a penguin discovered in a cave far from any coast.

But among all these indefinable figures there is one whose strangeness is due neither to the poor quality nor bad condition of the painting; on the contrary, it is certainly among the most perfect and best preserved in the cave. I have the reproduction in front of me: at first, it looks like an izard head and so you ask yourself: What’s the problem? Only the izard has such curved horns. But then you can make out two thinner lines extending from the horns and branching out to form what are in fact the powerful antlers of a megaceros; so the problem is solved, it was a paltry enigma, and then the eye discerns in the tangle of antlers the very clear shape of a roaring feline and everything becomes arranged differently; one mistook the thick stream of urine with which the wildcat marks its territory for an antler and now that this interpretation has become obvious, you can no longer even find the outlines of the izard or the megaceros; this hypothetical ruminant’s profile in fact calls to mind an eagle’s spread wing, and indeed I can clearly recognize the hooked beak of the raptor; how could we have seen in it the head of a roaring feline? It’s an eagle in flight, no point in looking any further, the curved line of its back no more resembles a stream of urine than it does a mammoth’s trunk, for example. We have to admit it looks too much like a mammoth’s trunk not to be one, and then the whole pachyderm immediately appears in three-quarters profile — we mistook its frightening right tusk for a bird of prey’s wing — so strange is this figure that when observed more closely it could be taken for a salmon, a crab, or a bison, judging by the woolly fur of its turtleneck. Our indecision is partly due to a whole slew of pentimenti, the traces of which are vaguely visible, often just barely. But, by and large, what do we really know about the aesthetic ideas of troglodyte painters? Why should we deny them the possibility of imagination and reduce their inventive audacity to an ignorance of the laws of perspective obeyed in realist animal art? To reproduce is to admit, and thus it is to submit, to agree to follow the herds of reindeer and their coprophagous flies in all their migrations. But man’s relation to the world changes the moment his imagination comes into play, it changes completely; it’s no longer a relation of constant humiliation and subjection, quite the opposite: it reverses completely, takes a turn for the better, and henceforth quadrupeds will have four equidistant left feet, they won’t go far. And so it was done.

As for the anthropomorphic figures in the cave, other than the headless woman and the penguin, they are few and far between, somewhat sloppy, and reduced to a bare minimum: all it takes are two eyes, two dark rings painted on a natural protuberance of the cave wall. This single portrait is used for every face, the resemblance is there, startling, a mirror could not do better, anyone can recognize himself in it; that dazed look is definitely our own — the malice of the gaze and the irony of the smile cannot change a thing about it, our face is one big nose that expresses, more than anything, a lack of comprehension. Perhaps this is why — and in order to feel as though they are part of the world in spite of it all, so as to merge with the other creatures and to be accepted by them, to fit in unobtrusively, without scandal, stealthily in other words — the other human characters who appear are all wearing animal masks, beaks and horns or plumage, and this clumsy ruse that communicates their goodwill by and large betrays their helplessness. The calm self-assurance of the animals accentuated the humans’ bewilderment all the more, emphasized their weakness and the erroneousness of their instincts that misled them about the taste of fruit and the chill of nights; so they made an attempt to escape this miserable, inferior, shameful condition by decking themselves out in feathers, skins, furs torn from animals who, once flayed, lose their arrogance, pink as the day they were born, equally tender, totally raw, and vaguely obscene because we replaced their silky fleeces with our own provocative nudity. Moreover, this exchange foretold the slow transubstantiation that would subsequently begin, following the domestication of the wild pig. And this explains why we devour so enthusiastically all the parts of its body, flesh of our flesh, from the snout to the tail, the dream incarnate of the anthropophagous butcher, the self-made man, nothing but obesity, foot shrunk to the nail, brains unraveling, fatty animal of tenderized human meat, without nerves, without soul, without that sickly sweet — but subtle, choice — aftertaste of sludge.

The V of “Vulva,” repeated over and again on the cave walls, already illustrates the dominant obsession of times to come. Two deep gashes made with flints — a crotch — the invisible body fills the surrounding space and is rendered almost palpable thanks to the power of suggestion of both the drawing and desire. More than thirty vulvae were counted on the single wall here, some large some small, some narrow some wide, spread out like a flight of gulls; but back then two different pictorial signs represented birds and vulvae, and we will have to wait until the advent of watercolors to see this superfluous distinction abolished at last. Another strange thing in the cave — this one unique and consequently less significant — nonetheless deserves a glance. I want to show you. If I can find it. Where was it? Don’t move. Wait here, I’ll be right back. If the catalogue is properly done, conceived from start to finish with the same logical rigor, this strange thing should be on the next page. Indeed it is. Here it is. We can get going. Next page. Stay behind me in a group. We’re turning.

STOP. Here we are. Don’t get under each other’s feet. Form a circle around me so everyone can see. You are now admiring the sole male sex organ in the cave, represented by a stalagmitic projection of forty centimeters (but it must have increased in size since the time the engraver traced the puny prone figure around it). Thick, opaline — not bad — it looks more like a block of frozen sperm. Who knows, perhaps it has conserved all its seminal virtues, but is it up to us to try our hand at artificial insemination? How far can science go, where do its rights end, who are we to fool around with the very principle of life, etc.? We know, moreover, that women did not do the work of decorating the caves, they were kept away from art just as they were from hunting, they were employed for the seasonal gathering of blackberries, plums, hazelnuts, the harvesting of edible roots, the collecting of eggs, snails, honey — I’m the bear, I go first, any objections? Such harvests in the wild were indispensable because agriculture did not yet exist, and that’s something we must repeat and retain: art preceded agriculture by some twenty thousand years, so that the old collective dream of fleeing civilization to renew our ties with primitive values and with the first passions of human beings does not entail, as one could be led to believe, buying a little ramshackle farmhouse and its fallow land, the practice of painting would be more pertinent — any monochrome painting is more rustic, typical, and authentic than a row of potatoes.

Motherhood was also exclusively left to women, which is no longer the case; quite the opposite in fact: today we may well be witnessing a transfer of responsibilities in this domain for, even if, as in the past, the mother still carries the child in her womb for the first months, afterward it is the father who lugs it around for ten years on his shoulders, where the larva goes through its slow metamorphosis by gaining weight on a daily basis. Kept down for too long by their education and then, until recently, by an unfair division of domestic labor, with access only to the wastewater from watercolors, women will finally be able to exercise their unsuspected talents freely. Imminent upheavals in the arts and sciences are to be expected; as soon as the legacy of this long bondage disappears, women will make their original voices heard and then it will be one surprise after another. One need only think of Pierre and Marie Curie. By mixing their radium with phosphorescent zinc sulfide, a person might perhaps lose some fingers, but one would also obtain a confection of glow-in-the-dark paint, opening whole nights to the possibilities of art. We would be at the dawn of history.

And besides, little does it matter how, the hand that works uses five fingers in the business, whatever the business, and as a result on occasion it loses one or more of the fourteen phalanges that had made up its initial endowment. Goodwill is never lacking, nor is noble ambition, nor fierce determination, the heart is in it, but our numbed extremities betray us. Only my foot slipped as I was walking along the ledge. My hand will not be helpful as long as it cannot grasp running water like a rabbit by the scruff of its neck. I put my finger in the secret gears that tirelessly turn the pages of this catalogue and here I am, trapped, cornered, carried away against my will by the mechanical movement, anyone could take my place, any finger, I don’t count anymore, and if I were an animal, I would be the waterwheel donkey, if I were an edifice, I would be a mill, as a vegetable I am the artichoke that one pulls the leaves off, I am also a shutter that flaps, a wave covering a wave, a meat cleaver. The pages turn, and now we see a copy of the negative hands disseminated throughout the cave — the artist applied an open palm to the cave wall and projected red or black powder onto this surface by blowing through a hollowed bone, then took his hand away — and these hands have been groping around for fifteen or twenty millennia, and mine gropes with them, I can pull it away, my print will remain. I have touched the back wall and I shall stay stuck to it, I won’t go beyond it either, impossible; it’s already lovely to have got this far, it was not without sufferings, look at all those twisted, mutilated hands, deformed by arthritis, decalcification, eaten away by frostbite or gangrene. All these old man hands groping along until the catalogue’s final pages. Then finally one of them closes it.

Sometimes I am a little bit hard to follow — but so-called “born leaders” are mostly shadowed by jealous men armed with knives waiting for the right moment — and it is precisely because my limp causes a deviation in all my trajectories and reroutes me three times over three meters that I was chosen to lead and comment on the guided tour through the Pales cave network. I am no fool. Only a lucid mind can understand the principles of the labyrinths dreamed up by architects and manage to get out of them, but it takes a system of thinking that is sufficiently confused and delirious, or excessively logical, to orient itself in the mazes dug out by rivers. Glatt and his ilk did not appoint me by chance. True, they are beginning to regret their choice. According to them, I’ve done nothing since I’ve been here, the dead Boborikine is more active than I am, more efficient, and at least he has remained faithful to this vocation. He is worried about the future of paleontology. He is exchanging molecules. He is becoming mineral. His remains already contain less carbon 14 than they did before, and this progressive diminution will allow us periodically to take a bearing. And so we shall not let ourselves be fooled by the speeding up or slowing down of History; we need only examine Boborikine’s bones scientifically to know the time and situate ourselves very precisely in it. For — and perhaps you’re hearing it from me first — dread death occurs at least forty thousand years after the official death certificate is written, when our last atoms of carbon 14 are eliminated. Only then do we cease to emit radiation and only then is the fate of our soul sealed for good. May God on that day welcome Boborikine into his holy keeping.

IS IT BECAUSE I am an archaeologist — trained as one and derailed as a result — that I am surprised that so few widowers, widows, and orphans are sufficiently affected by the unbearable absence to break into the dead person’s grave a few days after he or she was buried to see his or her face one last time even in this sorry state, even through their tears, to embrace the body one last time before it will truly be too late, and to verify that it really belongs to the person they thought it did and reassure themselves that he or she has not regained consciousness? This all too rapid resignation smacks of consent. There is something offensive about this instant acceptance. If the greatest grief is so sensible, we can appoint it a judge, it will not lead us astray, we can put ourselves in its hands to let it wisely govern our lives. But I am speaking as an archaeologist oblivious of everything I owe to grave diggers. I am getting carried away by my passion for my job. I want to move too quickly. The minute the dead are inhumed, I want to dig them back up. Patience. It is always too soon to unbury the dead. Never did a paleontologist worthy of his name dig up a dead man. We bring to light fossilized bones, nothing but stone, let’s not get emotional, the dead are no longer there. A skeleton needs living marrow to grow bigger and stronger, but its true adventure, its adventure qua skeleton begins later, slowly, under the right conditions it turns to stone and it’s a crying shame that consciousness cannot participate in the skeleton’s adventure all the way to the end, for it is a wonderful adventure, the kind of adventure consciousness loved, like meditating or remembering, a static adventure regulated by the passing of time with, at the end, peace.

But we are irremediably, not to say very superficially, creatures of the surface, and it is always difficult for us to admit that history in reality is being determined beneath our feet. For the past (what is putrefied and petrified) and the future (what engenders and endures) are in effect buried: passing time is subterranean. Our senses do not perceive it. Our spirits do not conceive it. All those antennae only give us information about space, or the current moment, that is, today’s weather conditions. We know, however, that the prosperity of a region depends on the resources belowground, and we also know that any history of horology, from the very first ticktock, is meaningless on the scale of time that produces the following riches: quartz, hydrocarbons, diamonds, every ore. I have done a lot of digging in my time, deep digging, I have thrust myself down into the earth like a tree all the while deploring the fact that I cannot travel in every direction at once, unlike the tree that plunges and pushes its roots ever farther, branching them out rather than having to choose between two diverging roads so as to explore them both. I would also have liked to possess the ability to dig in two places simultaneously without having to split myself in two, without separating my blood, with the blind but perfectly controlled perseverance also typical of moles.

I have often had occasion to see them at work, I know them well, or, let me say in passing, I know the ones who usurp their name — for they are never totally moles, fully moles, absolutely moles, they are missing gloves, mole gloves in order to be one hundred percent moles, entirely moles, worthy of the name “mole” even if, as such, despite their tiny hands that are always clean, they are already almost moles, more mole than any other animal in any case, the shrew for example compared to the mole, the shrew in point of fact is nothing like a mole, the shrew must be redesigned from tail to snout to obtain a mole and that is why, while awaiting the mole with mole fingers, lacking this actual mole, I propose to continue to use the term “mole” for all the pseudomoles, approximate or incomplete, that can give the impression of moleness, they have proved it, and I’ve often had occasion to see them at work, therefore I am very knowledgeable about and I admire and envy their remarkable sense of direction: naturalists are in the habit of slipping a radioactive band onto one of their tiny paws and following their underground movements with a Geiger (Hans, German physicist, born in Neustadt in 1882 and died in Berlin in 1945, for those among you interested in his trajectory) counter. These experiments show that moles navigate very well in their tunnels. They never get lost despite the daily growing complexity of the network; they do not wonder which way to turn at a crossroads and they are so sure of finding their way that they lay in a food supply in several places, on different levels, before bifurcating again, whence this interminable digression that allows me to describe them in their natural surroundings with all the rigor and honesty that one rightly expects from science.

Myopia fuels curiosity. It is this myopia above all that the mole’s curiosity would like to break through. And our curiosity is likewise stimulated by the mysteries to which our confused spirit gives birth. In truth, everything is very simple and somewhat disappointing. Archaeology has confirmed that man in his historical fiction has always been what he is, except for a few details; successive civilizations resemble each other so closely that it would be possible to recount History backward, beginning with today, starting at the end in order to travel back through the ages all the way to the most ancient known remains; and there too we would see a logical progression with effects and causes reversed: the chain of events would seem no less inexorable than the one on which we are dependent. With the same amazement we would measure the path traveled by men from the time of telephone and automobile cities who, little by little having rid themselves of these nuisances, demolished one neighborhood at a time to make room for the peaceful and remote countryside with its farming villages where the rooftops rested on swallows’ nests until some new advances came along, simplifying, simplifying, the walls’ heavy stones that were so difficult to extract from the earth having been cleverly replaced by partitions made of branches or cob, to arrive at long last at the comfort of our modern caves, while the military engineers managed over time to reduce significantly the range of our weapons thanks to a series of technical developments intended to make them less lethal: this escapade, sketched broadly here, would have been no more ridiculous than actual history. If our ancestors had prostrated themselves before a single God, we would have shattered that rudimentary idol in order to worship, forehead to the ground, our gods as numerous as the stars. It is movement that matters, evolution regardless of the slope; there is no design, no necessity, nothing justifies History such as we can reconstitute it. Life is stubborn, it wants to endure, but no one can give it a shape or a goal. It remains a principle without consequence, a pure, unusable energy; no matter how much I dig, what’s the point if my pick only strikes the skulls of these old, old ideas?

ALL THE SAME, Professor Glatt had advised me not to let anyone come down and it was not my intention to disobey his orders. The idea of disappearing for a while in order to proceed under the proper conditions with the inventory of the nonindexed objects discovered on the Pales site was rather agreeable to me; as soon as I can escape the gaze of others, I blossom. But I absentmindedly forgot to close the door behind me, and a bunch of busybodies followed me down the steep steps that lead to the cellar where all those objects stored higgledy-piggledy are waiting to be labeled and catalogued. After which they will be distributed to various museums or entrusted to various laboratories for analysis or even exhibited here in the cave; two additional display cases will no doubt be necessary to house the collection. It is always dark in the cellar. The light switch is to your right, if you still believe in this miracle: first there appears a single lightbulb, filled to the neck with a syrupy, cloudy glow that empties slowly into the ceiling lamp’s globe (a fly falls in and drowns, poor thing) so that the darkness withdraws slightly without for all that admitting defeat, without breaking its circle of wolves and dangers; now you can make out more distinctly the many assorted crates lined up against the four walls of hollow cinder block that has been specially treated to prevent leaks with an exterior waterproof coating that is totally ineffective because the inside plaster has rotted and moisture oozes in long yellowish streaks that swell as they branch out over the entire surface to be irrigated, and blisters form, and sometimes a fat, soft scale (think of that creamy petal that falls off the rose before the others) comes loose and silently strikes the floor, a compressed concrete slab reinforced with a welded wire mesh separated from the load-bearing beams and hourdi blocks by a polystyrene insulating panel that rests and weighs on a peripheral foundation of cinder blocks with a supporting partition wall, and continuous footing measuring 50 cm x 40 cm: nothing to worry about here.

Nothing to hope for either. No way out this time, no possibility of escape or evasion, unless I sit here amid the crates, head in hand, to move no more. But how long could I hold out? Hands don’t know what to do with the head that’s entrusted to them. Even the most skillful hands become blind and clumsy, the spriest hands are crippled, and even the meticulous hands that repair watches all day long a duck wouldn’t want for feet; so my hands, enfeebled by my extensive reading in rheumatology, are burdened by this head, if only they could toss it to you — because you’ve followed me until now — but what would you do with it? It would inconvenience you as well and you’d go looking for someone else to pawn it off on, this head that is too full, laden with ideas; its imagination exceeds the capacity of its skull, and it would not be very loyal of you, but hey, it’s not really your problem, it’s up to me to make do with it and to live with it sitting up there, might as well set it to work, or use it to take its mind off of me, or me off its mind. I am, in any case, cornered in this cellar, out of arguments this time, I have no choice. You’ll see how I am going to rise again in Professor Glatt’s esteem.

So. Seven crates, wide but not deep, containing scrapers, spatulas, chisels, and every lithic tool brought to light by the first archaeologists of the Pales valley, as well as weapons, flint daggers, harpoon tips, short-shaft assegais and their throwing sticks, along with household utensils from the bone-tool industry — collapsing today despite the ever-greater production of its raw material (absurdities of this kind are a sign of poorly understood economics that will wind up destroying the world) — needles, awls, polishing stones already used by the Magdalenians, who were clever and assiduous artisans, for is it possible to be a contemporary of the saber-tooth tiger and close one eye to measure a length of thread? Nevertheless, other bones of various sizes, sometimes mere splinters, piles of molars and canines, entire jawbones, leg bones and arm bones that went to the dogs, or paw bones, have not been studied and lie in a jumble: I don’t want to brag, but it seems to me that with a bit of patience I’ll manage to put them back together as if this were truly the order of things and that death preceded life, which is in fact created through the mechanical movements (undulatory and pendulatory) of the skeleton, once its various extremities have been gathered and properly assembled underground, I don’t believe it for a second. But it is true that in these crates lies everything you need to invent an entire world: men, beasts, materials, the necessary and the superfluous, in fragments beyond repair or in spare parts ready to be used, it’s only a question of perspective. I am paid to straighten out this mess and in particular to separate the human bones from all the others, which is a delicate matter for the differences are nonetheless similarities and if fish skeletons or snail shells are easy enough to tell apart, there are some crab legs, for example, that blur the distinction.

I’ll get back to this. Let’s not rush things. I am still speaking as a prehistorian. Let’s take a look instead at these two other crates that need to be catalogued. Sometimes you see absolutely heartbreaking scenes in museums when twenty museum-goers huddle, jostle, trample, and screech shrilly in front of some famous nude stretched out on her side who, even were she to metamorphose into a sow, would not have enough nipples to feed her litter of imbeciles; I myself saw a poor little piglet that was banned from the party by its brothers that were desperately sucking their mother’s ear — it would be a shame to wind up in such a position — especially since the piglet was finally killed and partly devoured by the sow, a sacrifice her maternal instinct demanded since she could not provide — so I will ask you to come forward one at a time and not remain in front of each crate for very long. That having been said, were something to happen as a result of their not respecting these instructions, I would not allow myself to be held responsible. That would be pushing it. I warned them, I mentioned the dangers, I added a deterrent counterexample to my recommendations, they heeded me not. They scrambled en masse to the crates, and hence the tragedy. I myself nearly suffocated to death, and now they want to punish me for professional misconduct, well I never, if that’s what they call justice in our country, there’s nothing to be proud of, so this is how justice is served, and I used to have faith in my country’s judiciary, etc., and my cheeks will be on fire, and nothing will hold me back if I am accused, should an accident happen if you do not follow my instructions. True, the cave’s treasure is all there in these crates, right before your eyes, within reach. At first glance, they look as if they contained mere stones. Which a less superficial examination — for the first glance always stops at surface appearance (still, the ruse of the stick insect — which, as its name implies, looks like a twig so as to fool the voracious blackbird but winds up being used to build the bird’s nest — is idiotic) — which this less superficial examination in fact confirms: three large smooth rocks in one crate, and the other filled to the top with worthless pebbles. Two millstones and a mortar in one, and in the other all the way to the top, fragments of variously colored minerals — everything necessary to finally begin painting.

AS YOU MAY have noted with some amazement, for a short time now, for a few pages, I have, without seeming to, been devoting myself heart and soul to my work. If I am still neglecting certain tasks that fall to me, if I am still at times guilty of absentmindedness, my goodwill can no longer be in doubt. We thought we had set out on the sort of adventure that never moves forward and is constructed ever so painstakingly around this assumption when suddenly things have changed: for once I have not shirked my duties; I have begun to take inventory of the crates just as Professor Glatt asked. I have shown myself worthy of my uniform and given them what they want. At this point, you might not even be surprised to see Angèle — that mysterious niece of Boborikine’s — turn up in my life, a big girl now who, having come to kiss her uncle, learns of his sudden death and seeks comfort in my arms, lovely girl with long white-blond hair that falls down her back like rain, and a profile so perfect that the throng of lovers who gather to her right and to her left grows continually; she is graceful, with a sway in her hips that derails trains and a pair of feet that stay close to each other, as close as the two wings of a dove. I would know how to speak to her, I’d manage to find the words, but no, absolutely not, even were she to smash twenty tiny porcelain fists against my door, or set up camp in my backyard, I would not open the door to her, there are limits to my indulgence. And in regard to my duties stricto sensu, I claim never to have done anything blameworthy, and the doubts expressed hither and thither about my competence and efficiency affect me deeply. I say this quite openly. I have always been a punctual, assiduous, courageous employee, which can also be seen on my service record in the family cannery of which my younger brother is now in charge and where I worked for a few years when I was starting out, before I turned to archaeology — even though, following tradition, I had been promised the directorship because I was the elder brother, and traditions are followed more strictly than anywhere else in the sealed sector of the canning industry. From father to son the business had been prospering since 1864. I was the first to break this cold chain. But for the time my apprenticeship lasted — because they tried to interest me in every phase of the production of canned goods by entrusting me serially with the responsibility for each one — I proved myself equal to the task: as punctual and assiduous during the week as boredom is on Sundays. And today, after more than thirty years, I could still easily demonstrate my competence in the matter were it necessary, and it is necessary.

Take, for example, a bean. This bean is delivered to me. I shell it. I very carefully remove the four green and tender seeds without crushing them. I weigh them. I pour them (with others of course, but let’s stick to these four or suddenly my tale will be impossible to follow because of a preposterous proliferation of secondary characters) onto a vibrating table equipped with, among other things, a ventilation system, which removes the dead skins and all the mineral or vegetable dust particles. The next operations are also carried out automatically, but I supervise. Our four seeds are then rinsed copiously in a drum, after which they are sorted, sifted, calibrated, stored according to size, in the same hopper for these four, of course, for the sake of the story (always my primary concern). Our cans are cylindrical, made of tin plate, constructed with only three pieces: the edges and the central piece, which is rectangular before being shaped; these are stapled together and coated with zinc chloride; the next step is the application of the end of the can to the body and includes the flanging of the body. During this step, the outer edges of the cylinder formed around the mandrel are turned outward toward a ninety-degree angle. The end is formed to fit over and around this flange by being pressed out of tin plates. The portion of the end that fits around the flange is called the cover curl. This curl is filled with a rubber base gasket compound that will form a hermetic seal (thanks to the rubber) when the cover curl is bent around the flange. And do not forget to fill the can before placing on the lid: our bean’s four seeds, drained and blanched, will not of course be by themselves, we will have to squeeze them in. At last the lid can go on and the can is then preheated, sterilized, then cooled — this process is called “appertization,” after its inventor, Nicolas Appert, a contemporary of Emile Littré, who also came up with a clever system of preserving perishable matter in a bell jar. The final operations are carried out automatically as well, but I continue my strict monitoring: labeling (haricots extra-fins), packing, verifying of seals, checking for metals (sometimes they slip in), wrapping the pallets in a plastic film, warehousing. What happens next, however, is out of my hands: delivery, placement on shelves (sometimes in the shape of an absolutely amazing pyramid), purchasing (or petty theft), home storage, opening (manual or mechanical, tricky in any case), consumption (not beans again! Enough beans already!).

Any living body that succumbs to death instantly becomes the prey of necrophagous insects, parasites, and germs, but happily it is in our power to forestall their assault and the decomposition they cause; and though in fact one must not be too quick to harbor illusions about the efficacy of these measures of preservation, one can indeed thwart the laws of nature for a time. This is how our canned meats and sterilized vegetables remain tasty for four to five years on average; then we learn of the first fatal poisonings, entire families decimated with no one left to cry for anyone, and the dog yowling away. Of course we are deeply affected by such tragedies; father, mother, children: all dead. What will become of the dog? But there is a faint glimmer amidst the horror: we at least have the satisfaction of having had nothing to do with it, only the victims are to blame; they were careless. We always stamp the “to be consumed by” date on the bottom of all our cans; obviously you need to know. Foodstuffs inevitably go bad, even the least bloody among them — two days after it was invented, bread was already stale. The alcohol or chemical preservatives we use in certain instances do not remain potent for all eternity: ascorbic or acetic acid, sulfur dioxide, antibiotics, and antioxidants only slightly delay the destructive work of the microorganisms, just as the red ochre salve used by the Magdalenians to anoint the bodies of their dead temporarily kept the vermin at bay; it’s a proven fact, traces of powder are still detectable today in their burial sites. They knew the properties of red ochre, having tested it on reindeer and aurochs skin; it also preserved man’s remains, or at least so they thought, ignorant as they were of the extent to which true leather’s resistance outclasses that of its pale imitations. But the care they took to lay out the body shows that respect for the dead is not some recent moral development carried out at the undertaker’s behest. Not at all. Even back then the need to reduce corpses to metaphysical dreamers definitely contributed to the awakening of human consciousness… Three little dots taken from the “i”s in “infinity,” for my subject is vast and even could I reproduce myself, there would still be another book to write here that I must forsake; this is not the first book I abandon in this way, from the first few lines, barely begun for lack of time or space, precisely because of the vistas it opens; no matter how I scatter myself, I cannot be everywhere at once. And then, I have begun another job, this one clear-cut, remunerative, in the public interest, which gives me social standing and which I have promised to see through to the end. So back I go. Besides, I did not wander as far afar as it may seem. I kept my eye on the crates: among the types of clay jumbled in the second crate, the red ochre in particular stands out, as red as that ruddy-cheeked blood orange that you always fear will break into a drunkard’s song at the end of a meal before it rolls under the table.

BIRDS CHANGE names whenever they change habitats, this is why they are at home wherever they go. Their flightiness does considerable harm to the notion of native land. Fortunately there are farmyards, nations are saved by their farmyards. However, this would not be enough. Nations are above all mineral, at one with their soil. Rome when it left home was ultimately defeated by Barbarians and returned to Rome with its she-wolf’s tail between its legs, immobilized for good, petrified, a tourist attraction. The geologic samples that we shall now examine more closely provide a rather accurate picture of the Pales valley, a picture that is, however, retrospective or prophetic, because we have only shards, fragments of rock, a vision of chaos or apocalypse, no matter, it’s the same scene. Every human work as it is constructed also foreshadows what will be, but in reverse, its successive ruins, and each year of our life discreetly celebrates the anniversary of our death: time passed through here, it will go back through here. Inexhaustibly rich in silicates, iron oxides, and manganese, the Pales region, birthplace of painting, is also reputed for its low grain yield, where the hens lay so rarely that storks hatch from their eggs. Art and hunger have thus belonged to one another since the beginning, shaped by the same dreams of abundance and sensual delight. I’m inclined to believe that the first painter discovered ochre’s properties as a colorant while sucking on a stone to stave off hunger. All day long he spat stars. This could very well be how the whole adventure began. The ever mysterious origin of stories interests me more than their always predictable endings; this is why I would make a pathetic storyteller — am I not naively lighting the evening bonfire on the thatched roof of my cottage? — a lousy storyteller concerned only with beginnings, origins, genealogies, etymologies, and continually postponing the start of his story instead of moving beyond, to the rest, to the action, because sooner or later, he must — no matter what ruses are employed or even deployed to delay as long as possible this fatal, inevitable, ineluctable, and terrifying outcome at the end of a sentence, on the edge of the void — conclude.

This way, please. At least, I think so. There are so many directions. But it must be this way, yes, I’d swear to it, but not on my life. This way out, then, straight ahead, then left, dark little hallway, left again after the overhang, watch your head, then right, take the steep path that leads to the upper level, another dark passageway, we grope along and yet we move ahead, we’re getting closer — this half-light in fact is not due to some negligence, make no mistake, nor to a lack of means; it is deliberate, maintained, necessary. Continuous lighting would quickly cause the painters’ colors to fade. Light tends to replace everything it touches. This is why the Pales network has a very specific electrical installation similar to the one used in theaters where daylight — too dated, anachronistic — is also kept out. Intermittent projectors, inspection lamps that seize a mammoth or a bison, but for just an instant, fleetingly, nothing like those rabbits frozen in the beam of a headlight like in aspic, here the visitor has no time to feast his eyes on what he sees: the chosen figures do their little trained-animal act and then night reclaims them. Let’s move along. This way. Not too fast, please. Pay close attention or you might trip on the pebbles littering the next section and that even threaten to obstruct it. But I’m here with you, out in front, I know my job, we’ll make it through.

Graphite, magnetite, limonite, hematite, xanthosiderite, stilpnosiderite, turgite, goethite, lepidocrocite, aeitite, glauconite, laterite, hausmannite, braunite, manganite, I invite hard-up literary hacks to profit free of charge from this little iterative ditty. Even though I am always sorry to have to abandon a line of thought, I cannot exploit each and every one, they would take me too far too fast, some in a zigzag toward the horizon, others in a spiral toward the depths, they would lead me away from my task, this relentless work of mine, I prefer to let them go, they’ll surface here and there no doubt, the most gorgeous crystallizations are often produced a good distance from the main deposit — the way a cold takes root in one’s feet and its big fat red fruit appears in the middle of one’s face — the undersea trajectory of the shark is punctuated at very long intervals by its flashes on the surface, and the hand that was testing the water is surprised to find it pointy, then the shark dives again, its hunger satisfied but its stride unbroken; let us never forget what is hatching in the depths, everything is related so sometimes everything becomes confused, it’s not my fault, the digressions I allow myself — follow me carefully here — are not equivocations or stalling tactics, on the contrary: I accelerate round the curves, I want nothing to escape me, I want to exhaust my subject, explain matters thoroughly, I refuse to be distracted by anything that doesn’t belong — did I open the door to that adorable angel who was writhing in front of it? These digressions go from a point A to a point C, or H, or X, rather than starting at the beginning of the alphabet each time (I’m trying to forget that inane nursery rhyme). This way I gain time, my work goes faster. Besides, we know that people who claim to zip along in a straight line go round and round in the forest, the rescue team will arrive after the crows.

Graphite, magnetite, limonite…exquisite nuggets for the Pales painters who filled their pouches with crude fragments extracted from the soil and built up large reserves of colorants that they stockpiled in one of the cave’s secret alcoves to which only the initiated had access: true artists were as rare then as they are today and the responsibility for decorating the caves fell exclusively to them; a few chance engravings in the recesses doubtless attest to the resentment felt by the talentless amateurs expelled from the main site — their mammoths are schematic and stunted, already resembling our poor little elephants. The collection of samples we possess was reconstructed by Professor Glatt and his team using pigments taken directly from the frescoes. All the shades sliding slowly from black to yellow were known to the painters, who nonetheless never managed to obtain blue, or else they thought it useless to put on another layer beneath a perfect sky, or green, but green was already devouring the entire landscape as far as the eye could see. The natural calcite flows provided the white without too much difficulty; they were left unpainted and were judiciously outlined by the angles and edges of the adjoining colored surfaces, exactly like the level of wine in the bottle measures the emptiness of existence. Sometimes I myself borrow this clever technique from the Paleolithic masters, and the blank space I leave between two passages is a result of the same graphite-saving practice, the same act of nonintervention; I don’t deny the influence, I learned my lesson.

And here’s something else to ponder: a tiger body, engraved midway up the wall in a chamber of the upper gallery, on whose flank we find four deep, parallel stripes with red accents. This was long ago the inspiration for a terse, peremptory study by Professor Opole entitled The Tiger-God of the Men from Pales. It was based on a meticulous analysis of this tiger, reduced symbolically to the pattern of its markings and devoutly placed at the very center of the cave, which got a lot of attention before it was destroyed by Professor Glatt in his counterattack: Drinking Time for Professor Opole. In that article, Glatt irrefutably proves that the alleged tiger stripes were actually made on fresh clay by a bear with one swipe of its claw, and the wall also displays very thin grooves that are traces of fur — the bear’s, without a shadow of a doubt, because women and men at the end of the Paleolithic Era had long not been the hairy primates we now see popularized in colored prints, as if the exuberant proliferation of their pubic fleece should have allowed the disposal of an unsellable stock of Adams and Eves. As for the red incrustations of the four stripes, Professor Glatt attributes them to a natural percolation of iron oxide, subsequent to the bear scratch: chance meddles in everything, and it exists as surely as the origin of the winds; sometimes it changes a rain cloud into a thoroughbred, a sandal, a Dalmatian tripping as it runs, collapsing, and it kills it off, but sometimes its work will last, it engraves a red tiger in stone; think what you will but whenever it happens, I take off my cap to it.

THEN, as the need arose when certain pigments started running out, the precious minerals collected were carried out into the sunlight so that tallow would not be burned unnecessarily and because the artificial light from the torches also made the colors untrue — how can you tell yellow ochre from rose ochre in this fiery ambiance? They also brought out the mortars and grindstones. Everything was ready at last, materials and tools spread out in front of the cave, what were they waiting for to begin? Dusk also subdues colors; how can you tell burnt sienna from burnt umber in this end-of-the-world illusion? Act quickly, then, as long as the sun is round, take advantage of the season of light, afterward it will be impossible, there’s never any daylight in autumn, the winter night dines at noon on the moon with the night to come. It would be foolish to delay any longer. Let’s go.

My telephone, disconnected, has become the handsome object of meditation it was until 1876. So it must be the doorbell interrupting me now. They call it a carillon; I don’t. I wait a moment. They persist. They grow impatient. The bell is pointing its threatening finger at me. I am obviously its target. It’s aiming at me. No doubt about it, I’m the one. They want to see me. They won’t leave without having seen me. It’s too late to pull out the wires. Besides, they’ll start to worry if I don’t answer: a skilled locksmith, overequipped with picklocks, skeleton keys, keys for tumblers and combination locks, bit keys and Zeiss keys, tubular and dimple keys, double- and four-sided keys, with his bulky satchel slung across his shoulder, will take a three-yard running start and break down my door, best to avoid that. I slide open the bolt: come in, Professor, don’t hang about outside in the rain on such a cold and windy day. The professor’s round, shiny face expresses one emotion after the other, already anger is replacing astonishment. It seems I’ve changed a great deal. I’m hardly recognizable. It was not enough to neglect your work, now you’re also neglecting yourself. That takes the cake, Glatt adds. I thank him for bringing dessert, really, you shouldn’t have. For once I make a little joke, and he is not amused. His anger rises again, pink, red, scarlet, a constant flow as if he were truly drawing from a well of blood: you haven’t shaved, and your hair, where’s your cap, and that uniform! Apparently I look a lot like a bear.

We are getting to the point of his visit. They are trying to find a replacement for me. They no longer listen to me on high. They’ve stopped believing in me. I’ve lost their trust. I’ve abused it. I don’t respect my commitments. I never keep my promises. I am definitely not the man for the job. Glatt has come round to their opinion. This time, he won’t defend me. I protest. I refute the accusations. Lies, loathsome lies. My words and actions have been in perfect accord since the start, in such harmony that you cannot tell one from the other. I would not, for example, be able to lift my little finger — and nothing is lighter than a little finger — if I didn’t say I was lifting my little finger, and no sooner said than done, said and done, said, done, said therefore done, let me prove it: if I say slap, Glatt reels, if I repeat slap, he strokes his cheek, slap, slap, he moans pitifully, slap, and his ear bleeds, slap, slap, slap, his big head bobs, did I happen to mention my silver signet ring, now that’s done, it’s been said, and his lip swells, a tooth pops out, slap, slap, both his eyes close, slap, slap, he begs for mercy, slap, slap, slap, here, let me walk you to your car. That’ll teach him. All it took was one word from me to get rid of him, permanently.

I yank out the doorbell wires as well. We shall no longer be interrupted. Everything starts with a little basic do-it-yourself work, a few very simple gestures on which the rest of the enterprise will depend; this is why I don’t want to neglect a single one (by now my methods are known); first, clean the fragments of moss- or dirt-encrusted rock with a knife, strip them and then I run them briefly under water to remove the remaining impurities, the sand and pollen dust coating them; I dry them on my jacket, then reduce them to a powder, the most friable I pound in the mortar with a flint, the hardest among them are ground on a flat rock, the millstone crushes them. Then, holding my breath, I pour the pigments according to kind and color into coffee bowls that were meant to be sold to the cave’s visitors as souvenirs so they are decorated with an anthropomorphized bison standing in front of an easel holding in its left paw a palette and in its right the tip of its tail with which it is painting — the drawing’s comic effect, nonexistent at first, I grant you, stems in fact from repetition: one morning, several days after you’ve acquired the bowl and have been drinking from it breakfast after breakfast, as you are bringing it to your lips, you will be overcome by an uncontrollable fit of laughter. But Boborikine’s desperate sales pitch fooled no one. In the end he put these ridiculous bowls in the junk room, stacked against the back wall, one nested in the other. I carried a dozen or so down to the cellar for my preparations because the earthenware the Magdalenians used did not reach us, or rather, it did, but in such a state, pulverized, containers reduced to their contents without loss of matter — and this, might I add in passing, is how we recognize perfect forms.

Not so fast. Sometimes the sheen of its outer beauty can compensate for an object’s compositional defect: the primitive pine picket fencepost also exists in Panama rosewood. But the underlying lie achieves the status of truth in the eyes of the naïve with, as a result, serious, long-lasting errors in judgment of which I shall broach only one here, a direct consequence of this disjunction: the titmouse is a female rodent. Whereas the Magdalenians’ simple terra-cotta bowls did not lie about their contents and differed from them only as a result of a circumstantial rigidity always about to fall to pieces, which indeed happened, as I said. My twelve bowls are now filled with powder. I’m talking, talking, but I am not all talk, I’m action too, the more I talk the more active I am. Our best guess is that the Pales painters thickened their colored pigments with animal fat; these same sacrificed animals became the immortal heroes of the wall compositions: reindeer or bison in aspic, seared in their juices, the flow of waters rich in calcium salts a final fixative for the figures. True, I hardly have time to devote to the hunt, but my own body as deep as a well will provide me with everything I need, an abundance of two other proven binders — neither my fat, which I could not, in all practicality, give up, nor my blood, already rare and in fact it can only coagulate itself and cracks as it dries. No, I shall use saliva and urine, the most efficient of binders as everything proves, to quote only the factual statements that come out of my mouth (the more I talk, the more active I am) and the sublime adamantine concretions that form on the slate slabs of those public lavatories in which men on the go have been relieving themselves for generations, relentlessly, each one modestly adding his little precious stone to the edifice that grows and grows and will defy time. In this way, the demands of nature that afflict and humiliate us will at long last contribute to our greatest glory. Case in point: Leonardo da Vinci himself was not loath to mix his urine with his color preparations in order to fix for eternity certain fleeting smiles. That’s the solution. No more hesitating. I’ll pee in the bowls. From century to century, while all the trades overhaul themselves and ditch their old practices for new technologies, the imperturbable artist sticks to the two or three actions that matter.

THE SUN is a giant spider that squeezes a lemon then swallows an airplane. The sea is a wall that the fish swim along or hug, some flaunt themselves, a boat drifts by. Elsewhere a sail is a pyramid wearing a palm tree for a hat, a palm tree that would be the schoolmarm in her smock. The chimney on the roof of the house would not fit through the door, black smoke belches from it, someone must be burning a tire in the hearth. The path winding through the patch of garden places the house it leads to a three-day walk from the street. A cow gnaws a ski in front of its nest box. The next-door neighbor mows his lawn with a baby stroller. Every tree bears its fruit, each color produces its plum, the apples would have an adorable little smile and would not cost more — and here the soft lead slips and breaks, pierces the paper, I’m pushing too hard, squeezing the pencil in my fist like a fork, but that’s not how one holds one’s fork either they tell me; I used to draw a lot back then and I painted on large sheets of paper with water of every color. Then again, at such a young age, coloring books already bored me to death, and I soon went over the edge: filling in the empty shapes, reddening the squirrel along with the leaves, spending my days under Snow White’s skirts like the least of her dwarves, no way, I had better things to do, more ambitious projects that I began to carry out immediately.

My entire oeuvre has vanished. And the child I was has already been swallowed by oblivion, total oblivion, without the least hope of a triumphant future rehabilitation, and even its tender shattered skeleton, decomposed, will never be reconstituted. Perhaps my old fractured femur will be exhumed. Posterity does surprising things. But what remains of a man whose work has come down to us? What living memory? What margin of freedom to advance or retreat, what capacity to react to or resist the official biographical fiction that slowly replaces the simple truth of the facts? We’ll soon see. Let’s go back to 1749. Louis XV has been reigning in his own right for six years when Marie Appert, née Huet, gives birth to her fourth and last son, Nicolas, on November 17 in Châlons-sur-Marne, as we can see on the baptismal certificate lovingly preserved by the Archives of the Department of the Marne: “In the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred forty nine, on the seventeenth of November, I, priest of this parish, baptized a son, born this day of the legitimate marriage of Claude Appert, innkeeper of the White Horse, and Marie Huet, to whom was given the name of Nicolas.” The child is lively, joyful, and his inventive mind can already be seen in the innocent games of youth: exposed to a temperature of 327 degrees centigrade, his friends’ lead soldiers are reduced to mush, victory! — eliciting the apprehensive admiration of his parents and teachers. Claude’s strictness, in effect, does not keep him from acknowledging his son’s merits, and Marie’s preference for her little last born is so obvious that his three brothers need no longer appear here. Nicolas’s love for this adoring and gentle mother would never flag. At the White Horse Inn at first, and then in the twenty-room Hôtel du Palais Royal, life is comfortable and there young Nicolas successively learns the trade of distiller and confectioner, in Châlons in 1770, then in Paris in 1780, after eight years spent in the service of the taste buds of the Duc des Deux-Ponts, Christian IV, then the Princess of Forbach, who it is supposed was not entirely insensitive to the hopeless love of this sweet, clumsy, and attentive boy because she became his mistress, and even almost axed to death Jacotte, a twenty-year-old fresh-faced, plump scullery maid whom she came upon in her lover’s arms. He was fired forthwith, after which he opened his confectioner’s business in Paris on the rue des Lombards.

He is thirty-one. Imagine beneath his wide forehead a round face with blue eyes, a strong nose, thick lower lip; now place this very blond, curly head on a slender, wiry but energetic body; then remove from his pockets two long hands, delicate and ligneous with knuckles that protrude like the knots on a wild cherry tree; dress him in a new black velvet pourpoint and a jabot of sparkling lace, or a smithy’s apron, or a palm-leaf loincloth, enough, leave him be, Nicolas Appert is at thirty-one a small, restless, and efficient man, always on the go, and passionate about preserving perishable goods. He also becomes enamored of his cousin, Marie Bonvallet, and then comes the breakup. His secret affair with the countess of Gandilhon is the talk of the town, and then another breakup. Let’s not dwell on that. In 1796, it’s Napoléon Bonaparte’s Italian campaign, and Appert, preoccupied with the problem of getting food supplies to the troops, gives up his business. He continues his research in Ivry-sur-Seine, where he is appointed municipal officer on 7 Messidor year III and here he meets his future wife, Cécilia Lance, whom he weds when the time comes, but who dies shortly afterward in childbirth. We are now in 1804. He buys four hectares of land, which he uses for growing the peas and beans he needs for his experiments. Built on this same site, his factory employs up to thirty women, who are supervised by the faithful Jacotte, who will also be the discreet mother of his six (or seven?) natural children. Five years later, with his preservation process perfected, Mssrs. Parmentier, Bouriat, and Guyton de Morveau, having tested it, respectfully take their hats off to him. The newspaper Le Courrier de l’Europe, dated February 10, 1809, pays tribute to the event: “Mr. Appert has discovered the art of stopping the seasons: he has managed to bottle spring, summer, and autumn, like those delicate plants the gardener protects against inclement weather and parasitic insects beneath a glass dome.” The following year, he receives an award from the government in the amount of twelve thousand francs and publishes a soon-to-be-famous manual, The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years. But he breaks up with the countess of Herculais — she is capricious, impulsive, the relationship could not last.

In London in 1814, Appert meets the engineer James Watt, who teaches him about the advantages of steam over all other forms of energy. Incidentally, his affair with Susan Price runs out of the same and he returns to France, where a disagreeable surprise awaits him: the Restoration government has superstitiously turned his preserves factory into a hospital. Nicolas moves to Paris and gets back to work, despite growing financial difficulties. His affair with Jeanne Le Guillou dates from this period, as do the success of his research on the extraction of gelatin from bones, his first attempts at replacing too fragile glass jars by metal cans, and his breakup with the aforementioned Jeanne Le Guillou. In 1822 he is finally recognized officially: the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry awards him the title of Benefactor of Humanity, despite the efforts of the countess of Herculais, who tries in vain to have him banished to French Guiana. From that point on, Appert receives a small pension from the State. He diversifies his research and becomes interested in the extraction of oil from ox hooves, as if he hadn’t already done enough for mankind. In 1831, with his bouillon cube concentrate, he modestly puts the finishing touches on his life’s work — who is the man who would not want to bring to a close his persistent, patient, painstaking life by summarizing it in such an obvious and enduringly efficient turn of phrase? And yet he will live another ten years, miserable, abandoned, in the sole company of his old servant Jacotte, who is still blindly devoted to him but has also gone deaf and is almost totally crippled. Appert dies on June 1, 1841; let us transport ourselves to the age of Louis-Philippe. His body is tossed into the communal grave with three other private individuals, and the question must be asked: have I managed to resuscitate the right one? How can we be sure?

IUSE UP my pencils from both ends, which goes to show I’m burning up my life with such impatience, such ardor, such mad generosity, I’m alive, and how the blood boils in my veins! — you, poor larvae, are quite at liberty to wait till the end of time to be born. As for me, I am at every moment moving and fighting, as I have done since my most tender youth, always running through the woods, a real tomboy, or counting the sheep in the fields, a proven method for helping you fall asleep; however, we were talking, on the contrary, about my stupefying energy and indefatigable drive, and it’s true, because I’m using up my pencils from both ends as I write, in the heat of the action, having sucked, nibbled, and chewed on them so much as I stand and gape that I now have at my disposable seven paintbrushes similar to those shafts that were sucked, nibbled, and chewed by the Magdalenian artists, which will do perfectly.

And why, might I ask, is it possible to place whatever you want on a table, everything and anything apart from another table, whereas absolutely nothing seems in a better position to support a table than another table, neither a couch nor a chair, and certainly not a shelf, just try it, a curtain rod even less so, and don’t even mention a street lamp, to the point where I wonder if the second table was not made by the inventor of the first who didn’t know where to put his cumbersome invention, with the sole aim of placing the latter on the former and thereby solving his problem, at least in part, since a third table was then necessary and, for these three stacked tables that he didn’t know where to put, he built a fourth that he placed on a fifth, whence no doubt their rapid and inexorable multiplication and today the incalculable number (thank goodness, for the sum would be frightening) of tables throughout the world — by hoisting myself up on the small kitchen table placed atop the big living room table, I need only stretch my arm to reach the ceiling, because I have decided to begin with the living room ceiling. Why? Because it offers the vastest surfaces in the house on which to paint and I’ve already cleverly solved the problem of scaffolding by setting the big table on the small kitchen table, thanks to which I simply need to stretch my arm to reach it. Besides, what’s the difference, the living room ceiling or another ceiling, you have to start somewhere, here or there, or over there. I could have chosen a wall, but then why one wall and not another rather than a ceiling, why not the living room ceiling, I preferred to put a stop to all that pointless shilly-shallying that accompanies scruples, clumsy justifications, and turns into regrets as soon as it is overcome; in the end the rejected option seems preferable to us, so that the work in progress is botched in the rush to finally tackle the part with which we are obsessed and that we will try to finish even more quickly in order to get back to the previous part that was ruined in our ridiculous haste, leaving us bitter and unsatisfied. It’s best then to do as I do and resolutely stick to the first decision: I’ll start by painting the living room ceiling, then the other ceilings and all the walls, all the nooks and crannies, these crannies with particular care, they are never so narrow that one cannot work on all eights spilling one’s guts, I would not be the first to do so.

It’s an ambitious project, chimerical perhaps, but I feel a nebulous need to carry it out for myself and my fellow creatures. This new activity will allow us to convey our difference, at last we will dare to assert our specificity among all the living species, we will fight resourcefully against our inferior, humiliating condition, to which our lack of instinct and our constitutional weakness has condemned us. We too will have our exclusive characteristics, our originality, our rites, our mating dances, our pavanes, our reference points in time and space; we will stop defining ourselves by our shortcomings and our infirmities. We will cease to be vague. We will take shape. The human being will be recognized, acknowledged, identifiable, irreducible. Not too fast though, we’re coming from very far. I shall begin by painting those animals whose self-assurance we envy and fear: reindeer, bison, horses, mammoths, all the large mammals that live in the Pales valley and that help us explore it little by little (the bison will lead us to the river, from which we will drink when thirsty). Later, perhaps we might hazard representing gods as well, and the great tradition of animal art will find itself enriched with a new gallery of zoomorphic profiles — how else, in fact, to imagine the venerable gods?

Will man one day use himself as a model and subject for his painting? I doubt he will ever be so presumptuous or have such a high opinion of himself as to deem himself worthy. And besides, for whom would these images be destined? His peers? What would be the point? The portrait of a man would only be of interest to an intelligent, sensitive living being, who would not be a man. Man will only ever address himself to man, in a closed circuit, man finishes in man. Let us add that the permanence of his fictive identity relies on a conscious effort that must not slacken at any cost, nothing objectively establishes it, it will remain fragile and contestable until the end. Accordingly, a child raised by wolves becomes a wolf, a real wolf, no less wolf than any other wolf, and no better, whereas a wolf raised among men will devour father and mother before being put down by a policeman — and madness destroys one human brain per second: the entire species could experience such a fate and return to the original chaos, from the heart of which, however, after many, many misadventures, the upright and aleatory, but more or less credible, figure painfully emerged, representing us from then on and whose likeness it would certainly be disastrous to multiply to infinity, for it is true that my mere reflection in the water is enough to make me question my existence, and the water’s.

Besides, I’ve cut off the water at the source, I’ve bled the main pipes and turned off the faucets. No point in leaving these pipes in the walls, I’ll yank them out as well. Such a complex installation — with its reservoirs and water tanks, and its many welded and angled pipes that join up and branch off, their meanderings through hot and cold, their lukewarm embraces, their brackish streams of copper and lead, a distribution system precarious despite its apparent rigidity and that tries to accompany the uncontrollable flow of fluids — would be a permanent threat to the frescoes. Not to mention the very real risks of leaks or floods, humidity cannot be walled in, it always oozes a little, we’ve seen it in the cellar, it rots the cement, it dissolves the plaster, my paintings would suffer. And the humidity would also damage them by accelerating the natural processes of the mircromodification of the pigments and ultimately would destroy them: the smudged colors will deform the figures such that they will become incomprehensible at first, then indiscernible, impossible to find, improbable, and, if you look closely, unimaginable. Why hasten the catastrophe? A few simple precautions will guarantee my paintings an afterlife of forty or fifty thousand years, beyond which I have no ambition. I cut off the electricity. I boarded up all the windows. This way, the germs from the cyanophyceae, moss, and lichen will not receive enough light to thrive. I’ll work by candlelight. Nevertheless, I will have other things to fear. Bats, for example, will certainly be attracted by the cool, dark calm of the place. Taking advantage of my absences, vandals will break in and carve vulgar and anachronistic graffiti on my paintings. I cannot accept this depredation, this malevolence. Believe me when I say I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to close up the house for good, with me in it, block all the exits and bar the door.