The Magyar Venus

CHAPTEREIGHT

July 19

The countryside is extraordinarily beautiful. The people here call them mountains, but really they are hills. The wooded hillsides are covered in beech trees with lovely silvery leaves interspersed here and there with dark green evergreens. There are meadows, and lakes the colour of emeralds. The feature of the landscape of most interest to me are the limestone outcroppings. Even from below I can see they hold much promise. The going is fairly steep, but not impossible to someone young and in good health.

Once again I am the most fortunate of individuals. The Nddasdi family has insisted that I should stay in a cottage at their estate. It is right in the mountains, on the eastern edge of a great plateau, a beautiful place with cascading waterfalls and streams, surrounded by magnificent slopes. The town is small and rather quiet, its main industry, a foundry, having relocated almost thirty years ago. There are hopes it will become a resort, a place for people from Budapest to spend their summers away from the heat of the city, and has been named Lillaftired. I am grateful to be here, as I am told that Budapest is very hot and dusty in summer. I remember only too well the extremely hot summer we endured at home last year, and am glad to be in the cool of the mountains.

Still no word from T, but I must be patient. His business affairs are of the utmost importance, I am convinced, or he would be here by now. Sometimes at night I fear that something untoward has happened to him, but then comes the dawn, and my work in the caves, and these morbid thoughts vanish.

There are so many caves. I despair when I think how many lifetimes it would take for me to explore them all. I have eliminated several as not fit for habitation even by most primitive man, and others because they are devoid of any soil, and therefore all is revealed with the most cursory search. If ever man lived there, his signs have long disappeared.

I have decided to restrict my search now to two caves. Both are very high above a valley, and quite difficult to reach, and commended themselves to me because of their good aspect. One has two chambers off the entrance, the other a single one. They seem to me suitable places to live if one must live under these conditions, as ancient man did. The entrances to both are high so that a cooking fire would not cause serious problems, the single chambered cave in particular having a very high cathedral ceiling. Both are approximately 100 feet or more in depth, and, being situated at the narrower end of the gorge, would provide a good opportunity to watch for game from relative safety. I have found small pieces of stone which may well prove to be altered by man rather than the elements in the two-chambered cave, and a skull which I believe to be a bear in the other. Tomorrow I will choose one, perhaps with the toss of a coin, given no more scientific solution, and contrive to make a start.

September 16/17.

You'd think spending the night with the first great love of your life would cure any case of insomnia. Any case but mine, that is. At least I had something more interesting than maps of Hungary to look at that night. Karoly slept soundly, and, with the cares of daily life temporarily at bay, the lines of a couple of decades smoothed by sleep, he looked much as he had in college, the charming, funny, affectionate man I'd loved. It was difficult for me, with him so close beside me, to think he was capable of anything the Divas accused him of: blackmailing Morgan, cheating on his expense account, forging a diary and a twenty-five thousand-year-old artifact, and, if Cybil's rather emotional ramblings were to be given any credence, saying something so terrible to Anna that she threw herself off a bridge. Somehow, lying there in the semidarkness, none of it seemed even remotely possible.

But then, of course, came the dawn, and with it harsh reality. Surely all of the Divas couldn't be wrong. Surely they couldn't be caught up in some collective hysteria that made them invent all of these things. And what did I really know about Karoly? What did I know about any of them? Time, life in fact, had intervened, and all of them were, to some extent, strangers to me. I went over the previous evening's conversation, at the restaurant, and the things he'd said in the night. But I had not been truthful, not at least in response to his questions over dinner. How could I be sure he was being honest with me?

The thing was, ever since I'd started reading the diaries, I'd had this sense that something was amiss. Diana had felt it, too. In my rather lengthy conversation with Dr. Frederick Madison, I'd told him that I thought that scientific testing was a second line of defense, really, that came into play after someone who had a bad feeling for the object in question had doubts as to its authenticity. And the more I read the diaries, the more I felt that way. Something was wrong with them. So far, however, I couldn't point to anything specific. I'd sent the Divas off to verify the landmarks that were mentioned, and they all checked out. Even the weather was right! Not only the paper on the original, but the ink had come through with flying colors! But here I was lying in the dark beside the man who'd published them, who'd used them to find the Venus, which, of course, also checked out, and I was having my doubts.

Had I felt the same twitch when I'd looked at the Venus, sitting in her spotlight at the Cottingham that first night, that signal that told me something was not right? I had not. This could be explained by the fact that I knew nothing at all about twenty-five thousand-year-old artifacts. Or it could be because the Venus, quite simply, was real.

But what, exactly, I had to ask myself, did this have to do with Anna Belmont's death? Nothing except that she'd been to the gala unveiling at the Cottingham, and she'd left, come back to the bar, and yelled at a group of people standing there before jumping off a bridge. That, and my dream of course, or should I say nightmare, of Anna floating over my back fence with the Venus in her hand. People said she was crazy. Maybe the crazy person here was a certain antique dealer.

Except—except that she had had her little spell, if that is what we could call it, when Karoly had mounted the stage and started talking about the diaries. I was certain that was when it was. Had she seen the Venus? I didn't think so. I knew she hadn't left the building, because she'd been in the women's washroom still in some distress, but I hadn't seen her filing past the Venus with the rest of us. After that she'd come to the bar, and she'd pointed to a group of four people, two of whom, Karoly and Frank, were intimately associated with the diaries. A coincidence, surely. But was there any evidence that it could have been Courtney Cottingham or Woodward Watson? I'd ask Morgan about the latter, but I was certain the answer would be no. Morgan had been unaware of the tragic events of Anna's life when we'd first met in the bar before the gala. That had been clear from her reaction, which paralleled mine. And I remembered that Woodward had asked Anna if he knew her. Courtney had not looked guilty, it seemed to me, but rather just plain baffled by it all.

These were not the kind of thoughts I wanted to have, given my present location, but they somehow seemed unstoppable. By about six in the morning, I decided that breakfast with Karoly wasn't something I wanted. I had a quick shower, gathered up the clothes that seemed to have scattered themselves about the room, and after a quick glance at Karoly, let myself out. I had a feeling he was awake, but he didn't say a word.

It was barely dawn, but when I crossed the lobby, I heard my name. "Good morning, Lara," the voice said. "Changed hotels, have we?"

"Hello, Frank," I said. "Not a bad hotel for a penniless publisher." He sounded a little peevish, and for a moment I wondered if he was jealous, although why he would care what his heterosexual acquaintances were up to, I couldn't imagine.

"I'm traveling on Karoly's tab," he said. "Cottingham official business."

"So I've heard."

"I was just going to pick up a coffee and take it out to the Fisherman's Bastion," he said. "Care to join me?"

"I don't know what that is," I said.

"Then you must come. We'll have the place to ourselves before the tourist buses get there. It's a bit chilly, but worth it."

It was. The Hilton is located in Buda, on top of the hill, a short walk from Buda Castle. The Bastion, a rather frivolous white colonnade, interrupted by turrets and towers, neo-Romanesque I guess you'd call it, runs right along the edge of Buda hill. Frank found us a couple of chairs from the cafe there, not yet open, and we sat high over the Danube. The dawn light was gray with just a hint of pink, and mist swirled around and under the bridges: the Lanchid, the Chain Bridge, almost directly below, farther away, to the right, the Elizabeth Bridge. To our left, Margit, or Margaret Island, in the middle of the Danube, looked like a magical ship, floating in the mist. Across the river, Pest was waking up, a yellow tram making its way along the Danube Corso, cars, headlights still on, edging along the streets. It was really lovely. I'd thought the previous day that I was in danger of losing my heart to this city. That morning I believe I did.

Hearts, lost and otherwise, seemed to be on Frank's mind as well. "Are you going to break his heart?" Frank said, bestirring himself at last.

"I don't think his is in any more danger of being broken than mine," I said.

"I'm very fond of Karoly," Frank said. "I think of him as this little lost soul, somehow, almost naive in his acceptance of people at face value. He sees in people what they want him to see. I think people like that are almost certain to be disappointed, if not betrayed."

"Is that right?" I said.

"Things are starting to go better for him now," he said. "He's had a difficult time, you know, with his divorce, and the rather abrupt departure from his job at the Bramley. I don't think he expects this winning streak to last, of course. He may have been raised in North America, but he is cursed with an acute case of Hungarian pessimism. It's a national characteristic, you know. It's in the DNA, I suppose. I suffer from it a bit myself."

"Frank, this conversation is a little byzantine for me. I'm born and raised in North America, don't have a drop of Hungarian blood as far as I know, and I need something a little more straightforward. So, forgive my direct approach, but what are you trying to tell me?" I said. "Is it stay with him forever, or is it buzz off?"

"I don't know," he said. "Now that you mention it, the indirect approach may be very Hungarian too."

"You're the one who told him where I was," I said.

"True."

"How did you find out?"

He laughed. "I've infiltrated the Divas. There is a mole in your midst."

"Who?"

"If I told you, she wouldn't be a mole anymore. You have a one in four chance of being right the first time."

"My guess would be Cybil. She knows you better than the rest of us. She thinks that maybe Karoly said something to Anna that would drive her to suicide."

"She what?" Frank exclaimed. "That's ridiculous! I knew Anna, you know. I went to see her a few times when she was holed up in that ghastly apartment with her equally ghastly mother. Cybil suggested I visit, and I did. Let me tell you: Anna was stark, raving bonkers. I told the police that, too. Some fellow who lived by the bridge told police he thought she might have been chased out on to the bridge and over the side. That is absolute bullshit. Losing her child was a terrible thing, but other people survive it. She locked herself up in that little apartment, with her dotty mother, and went quietly mad. She was always a little nuts. Think back to college. She did some really crazy things. Admit it!"

"I suppose," I said. "They seemed more like pranks, though. I remember she talked us into climbing over the wall to one of the men's colleges. We had to pile up garbage cans to do it. We got caught, of course. But the headmaster invited us for sherry."

"Did you happen to notice that she stole some of the silver?"

"No!" I exclaimed. "Well, yes, I do recall that, now that you mention it. You are exaggerating. She took a spoon or something, to prove we'd been there, but she returned it."

"No, she didn't," he said. "It was a silver soup ladle. Sterling, no less. I found it in her stuff when I went to help Cybil clear out the place after she died. The emblem of the college is quite clear. I sent it back to them with a note."

"It was still a prank," I said. "Although I suppose she should have returned it."

"I'm trying to tell you that Anna was nuts, and not just nuts, dishonest. I helped Cybil clear out her room. There were clothes in that closet with the tags still on them. I think she shoplifted, too."

"Without leaving home, you mean?" I said. "Rather hard to do. Wouldn't it be more logical to assume that her mother, or Cybil, bought her new clothes to try to entice her to go out?"

"I'm just saying she may have been dishonest. For sure she was crazy."

I thought about that for a minute. Anna, it had to be said, had been a little manic in college. Her pranks could be, at times, annoying. But dishonest? I didn't think so. Stark raving bonkers? I simply couldn't agree. I decided, however, that there was no point in saying so to Frank.

"So why did you go to visit her?" I said. "If you thought she was so crazy."

"I guess I felt sorry for her," he said. "More to the point, Cybil asked me to."

"I suppose it doesn't much matter now," I said.

"It does, if Cybil is saying those kinds of things about Karoly," Frank said.

"I'm sure she'll get over it," I said. "She's upset, and casting about for a reason for what Anna did, when there isn't one, not a logical one, that is."

"What could he possibly have said to Anna to make her jump off a bridge?" Frank said.

"I have no idea. But why let it bother you? As you have pointed out, life is improving for Karoly. You, too, I expect. Both of you have rather benefited from the Venus, haven't you?"

"No question about it," he said. "While Karoly was breaking up with his wife and getting offed from the Bramley, I was going broke. The large chains had completely revolutionized bookselling, and I couldn't make a living on their terms. I couldn't even find a buyer for the tattered remains of my company. And then Karoly walks into my office and I get the book deal, plus I'm going to do a catalog for the Cottingham, and I'm here to do a deal for the catalog for a special touring exhibit. Not bad for the kid of immigrants. I'm not rich by any means, but I'm not broke anymore, either. I don't live as high off the hog as Karoly, but then I don't have his huge debts."

Huge debts? I wanted to say, but I didn't. Perhaps this was Frank being byzantine again, trying to talk me into leaving Karoly. "You weren't entirely truthful when you told me at lunch a week or so ago that you had to remind Karoly that he and I had been an item in college, were you?" I said instead.

"No," he said. "I should not have said that. He was very distracted that evening, but he remembered you all by himself. I have to admit you're good for Karoly, even if he doesn't think it will last. He thinks there are things you aren't telling him."

"The two of you seem to discuss me a fair amount," I said.

"Not really," he said. "I'm surmising really. You're thinking it's none of my business, and you're right."

"No, I'm thinking I'd better be on my way," I said. "The Divas will be wondering where I am. I'm hoping you won't tell them, by the way. Not even your mole."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Frank said.

In the taxi on the way back to my own hotel, I decided that I wanted to spend the day with the Divas even less than I'd wanted to talk to Karoly that morning. I'd been thinking about heading out of the city and into the Biikk Mountains, just to get a sense of the place, and see, once again, if the diaries reflected reality. I'd even bought myself some lovely old binoculars in one of the antique shops on Falk Miksa to help me find the caves. This, I decided, just might be the day to do it.

This course of action was confirmed when I got back to the hotel, because sitting in a cafe across from the hotel entrance I spotted Mihaly Kovacs. He must have followed me back to the hotel that day, after I'd seen him in the restaurant. I made a dash for the door from the taxi in hopes that he hadn't seen me. It was definitely a good time to get out of town.

The people at the desk told me that they could have a rental car for me by eleven, so it was back to my room to pack, and to work on the day's assignment for the Divas. I took a small bag, in case I needed to stay overnight, with some reasonably sturdy walking shoes and a waterproof shell, a change of clothes, and then I pulled on jeans and a warm sweater.

By the time the Divas were down for breakfast, I was ready to go. "So what's our assignment for today, Chief?" Cybil said. She was obviously raring to go, with her fanny pack at her side, jeans and a sweatshirt, and her white and red walking shoes on. "I think we served with distinction yesterday."

"Yesterday was the easy part," I said. "Today will almost certainly be more difficult. Today, you are going to try to find Piper's apartment."

"How on earth would we do that?" Diana said. "Unless there's an address or at least a street name."

"Sorry," I said. "There are clues, however, and I've written them out for you. According to the diaries, it's in an area called Lipotvaros, named for Leopold, who would have been one of the Hapsburgs. It's near Leopold korut."

"What's a korut?" Cybil said.

"I think korut is another name for a type of street. We have streets, avenues, lanes, roads. They have koruts, uts, utcas, which would probably be little uts. A korut would be a major street, I think. Now Lipotvaros is an area that still exists. It's part of the fifth district, I think, right here," I said, spreading the map out on the table and pointing. "It is, as the diaries point out, near the Danube. In fact it goes right down to the Danube. It's one of the oldest parts of the city. The rest of the clues are as follows: close to Parliament, a little bit north and west of the Basilica. There may be an old coffee house nearby. It's a four-story building, neoclassical in style—think four columns, straight lines. It has some interesting porcelain tiles around the entranceway, a large staircase inside. It has a courtyard in the middle, which you may or may not be able to see. It's across from an art nouveau-style building of five stories. And if you got the corner apartment on the fourth floor, and if you stood just so, you can see the both the Parliament and the Danube, at least you could in 1900."

"I don't see a Leopold korut," Morgan said.

"Get out the book about Budapest in 1900," I said. "If I knew exactly where it was, I wouldn't be asking you to find it."

"How do you know it will still be there?" Diana demanded.

"I don't," I said.

"Even if it is, it might not have the porcelain tiles in the entranceway," Cybil said.

"That's right," I said.

"There isn't even a street name," Grace said.

"Exactly," I said.

"Let's get going, girls," Morgan said. "We have our assignment. We can talk all day about what we don't know about it, or we can go look for it. I, for one, intend to find this place, if it exists, and pin it down very closely if it doesn't."

"The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer," Cybil said. "I expect to have buns of steel after all this walking."

"What are you going to do?" Diana said.

"I'm going to move a little farther afield," I said. She looked at me suspiciously. I wondered how suspicious she would be if she knew about my previous evening's activities. I didn't think I wanted to be nearby if she ever found out.

THE CAR WAS at the front door as promised. I'd seen the Divas off on their assignment, had left a note for them at the desk to say I might not be back that evening, had done the same at the Hilton for Karoly, and was ready to roll. I looked around after the man from the rental agency and I had concluded the formalities, amazingly uncomplicated, much to my surprise, but there was no sign of Kovacs.

I pulled the car, a little teal-colored Opel hatchback with animal hairs all over the seats, out on to Andrassy ut and headed east, past the city park, before hitting the M3. Driving in Budapest, no matter for how short a time, seemed a foolish and life-threatening thing to do, but I managed it. I'd been warned by the rental company that I would have to get a permit for the tolls, which somehow I also managed to do at a station on the side of the highway just out of Budapest. Once on the highway, the driving wasn't bad, flat at first, but then, as I got farther out, some rolling hills, and farmland, vines, and little towns with orange-tiled roofs. It was very pretty. There wasn't too much traffic on the well-maintained four-lane road, so I made good time, stopping once for the permit, and a second time just for a stretch, and a check of the map. Piper had referred to the town of Lil-lafured in the Biikks, had stayed there, in fact, and I could find it on the map. But it seemed just a little bit too far to drive at that time of day, so I opted to go instead to Eger, on the western edge of the Biikks, rather than Lillafured, farther east. Either place, I reasoned, would give me a feel for the diaries' contents.

When I took the turnoff for Eger, a dark green Toyota Camry pulled off at the same time, and pretty much stayed with me right into the city. It made me nervous, thinking as I was of Mihaly Kovacs standing at the hotel, but the car stayed far enough back that I had no chance to see the driver. I decided I was imagining things, and kept going.

I was in Eger by midafternoon. It was autumn, and already the sun was fairly low in the sky. I wasn't too keen on wandering around caves in the dark, and it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to get all my exploring done and get back to Budapest in one day, so I found myself a room at the Flora, a hotel that boasted a spa and hot springs, and spent what was left of the day exploring Eger. It's an attractive town, baroque in style, all pinks, peaches, and yellows, topped by red tile roofs, particularly pretty in the late afternoon sun. There's a handsome brilliant yellow cathedral, Italian in style, a castle, or what's left of one, and even a Turkish minaret. And there was wine to be drunk in the many cafes, grown in the vineyards in the rather charmingly named Szepasszony-volgy, the Valley of Beautiful Women.

While being there alone without the Divas, and doing all the tourist kinds of activities, gave my afternoon the air of holiday, it wasn't. All the while I kept checking over m shoulder, but neither Kovacs nor the green Camry were t be seen.

I THOUGHT THAT after all that driving, a couple hours sightseeing on foot, and some really lovely wine, I'd sleep that night. For days, if not weeks, I'd been telling myself I'd sleep if I got tired enough, but I had long since passed that point, and still I was wandering around most nights like some restless wraith. On this particular occasion, every time I dozed off I dreamed of Anna, holding the Magyar Venus, crying and pointing. This time she was pointing toward a rather dark and menacing cave.

IT WAS EARLY morning when I packed up and left the hotel. Steam was rising from the warm pools outside, where already people of various shapes and sizes were taking the waters. Two men were playing chess at a table in the pool. I supposed I might benefit from a spa treatment or two, but I didn't have time.

With the help of directions from the concierge, who spoke excellent English, I headed into the Biikks to find a barlang, a cave. I knew I wasn't going to find Piper's cave. As guidebooks to the area made clear, there were hundreds of these barlangs in Northern Hungary stretching right into Slovakia, and it was ridiculous to think that I'd just strap on my walking shoes, head into the Biikks, and happen upon the right cave.

What I wanted to do was essentially what I'd been doing all along, which was to test Piper's narrative to see if the descriptions of the surroundings remained credible once outside Budapest. I was still looking for something, the whatever it was that was bothering me, but so far, no go. On the other hand, if the diaries were consistent that would lend some weight, if not assurance, to the story of the discovery of the Venus.

And indeed, the description of the countryside rang true. I took a road that wound first through many vineyards, this being the part of the country from which the famous Egri bikaver wines come, but which then started to climb higher through steep turns right into the hills. The beech forests interspersed with dark evergreens matched the diaries' description perfectly, as did the alpine meadows, grass gleaming with the previous night's rain, and the tiny, brilliant green lakes. The leaves of the trees were a gorgeous yellow in the autumn sun. As the road climbed higher, I began to see the limestone outcroppings, and then the cliffs that Piper had written about, where the caves of the region were to be found.

I'd put about thirty kilometers on the odometer, when I saw what I was looking for, a cave entrance, high up over the road, but quite visible from it. I trained the binoculars on it, and on the ground leading up to it, and decided I'd give it a go. The Hungarians might call these mountains. Where I come from they'd be called hills, and climbing them didn't seem insurmountable by any means, a hike up a reasonably gentle slope.

I found a place to pull off and park as close to where I knew the cave to be as I could, although from directly below it couldn't be seen. There were trail markers, however, and a rather overgrown but still distinguishable path heading upwards. I decided to follow the trail as long as it kept going up, on the assumption it would probably lead to the bottom of the rocky ridge in which the cave was situated. I hauled out my walking shoes, and sitting sideways in the driver's seat, with the door open, put them on. As I did so, a dark green Camry passed me. I didn't look up in time to see who was in it, but it sent an unpleasant shiver up my spine. I watched as it took the turn ahead, lost sight of it in the trees, but caught a glimpse of it again farther along the road at the next turn. There too it kept going. In fact, it didn't even slow down. I told myself that there was more than one green Camry on the road, and even at that I couldn't say the driver of any one of them was looking out for me.

As I'd predicted, the climbing was not particularly difficult, none of it of the fingernail-gripping-stone variety, simply a walk up a reasonably steep hillside through a forest of beech. I stopped to catch my breath after climbing over a large fallen tree that blocked the path, enjoying the exercise and fresh air—until I heard what I thought was the crack of a branch behind me. I turned and looked back down the trail, saw nothing, but realized just how silent the woods suddenly were. There wasn't a chirp from any bird, nor the sound of any cars on the road.

Stuffing down incipient panic, I kept climbing until I reached what I thought was the bottom of the rocky ridge high over the road, only to find it wasn't. I stopped and again heard what I thought could be an animal in the woods below me and to the right. The other sound had been below and to the left, which either meant that I was imagining things or there were small animals about, or, and this was my least-favorite option, there were three of us in the woods. The cave, which from the road had been quite visible, was from my current position, nowhere to be seen. I kept climbing steadily upward—it was higher than I'd thought—until at last I saw the rock face, at which point I left the path, now almost extinct anyway, and took the last few steep steps to the rock. It was relatively smooth, and there was no way I was going to go straight up from there. Again I heard a sound in the woods behind me and lower down. Perhaps I should have made a dash for the road, but I would have run into whoever it was down there, and it just didn't seem like the best idea in the world. I couldn't go up, and I didn't want to go down, so there was only one other option, which was to edge along the rock face—there was only one direction where this was possible—and hope to find a hiding place. The rock was damp and clammy, the smell of mold in my nose as I edged my way along. The footing was slippery, precariously so, but I hung on.

The sounds below were louder and closer when I saw it at last: the entrance to the cave I'd seen from the road. I hauled myself up over another ledge of limestone, slipping a bit as I did so, and then, with a quick few steps, I was in the cave. It was a spectacularly large space, the forefront of which was reasonably well lit due to the sunlight outside, but rapidly disappearing into darkness toward the back. I scrambled my way in to a large stone and crouched behind it. If someone was following me, I reasoned, they would be caught in silhouette in the entrance to the cave. I knew I was trapped, but by now I'd assembled a little pile of rocks beside me which I was prepared to use if pressed, and I had the advantage of having become accustomed to the dim light at the back of the cave, something a new intruder would not.

I sat there for what seemed an eternity, but was maybe ten minutes, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. No one came. No bats swooped over my head. No cave bears roared. Nothing. So gradually I let my eyes slip away from the entrance and had a look around. I was in a huge chamber, maybe 150 feet deep with a roof that tapered up to a point, like a vaulted ceiling. I could see that this would be a place where people could live. Several families could survive and make their home, however temporary, here. The roof was high enough that fires could be lit against the cold, and up on the ridge it would be possible to watch for game. This, then, was the place where Piper had toiled in what he referred to as considerable inconvenience. Not this specific cave, maybe, but one just like it. And it could not have been easy, climbing up here every day. Light must have been a problem. For a few hours a day, perhaps, if the opening were situated just so, there would be enough light shining into the cavern, but otherwise there would be only this gloom. And this was 1900: no flashlights, no floodlights, only torches against the dark.

This cave, or one just like it, must have been the find spot for the Magyar Venus. I found this thought extraordinary, that people who had lived under these conditions had managed to create something as beautiful as the Venus. Like everyone else, I suppose, I thought of cave dwellers as primitive creatures of subnormal intelligence. But they couldn't have been. They must have been able to see beyond the walls of the cave, in their minds at least. The people who had lived in this cave at the time the Venus was carved had brains the same size as ours. They must surely have loved and cared for their children, and found some way of working together, or we would not have survived as a species. And if that was true, then maybe I would have to rethink my idea of progress, that Darwinian idea, or at least everyone's interpretation of it, that we were becoming increasingly advanced and civilized. What, after all, made us more advanced? Was it technology? Perhaps we should be judged not just by the fact we had it, but by the purposes to which it was put. Were we increasingly more generous toward our fellow man? I hardly thought so. Were we any less superstitious, for example, than the people who had lived here? Not if daily horoscopes and such were anything to go by. There was a lot to think about hiding in this huge cathedral in stone, ideas that became, as I sat there, an absolute conviction that the Venus was real.

This little riff on the Venus, however diverting for me, was not going to solve my immediate problem, which was how to get out of here. My eyes flicked back to the cave entrance. There was nothing to be seen but rocks and trees. The cave had no back entrance in sight, and while I could sit there for days, I supposed, thinking philosophically about cave dwellers before I shriveled up and died, it wasn't a particularly entertaining idea. There was nothing for it but to head out, and hope my fevered imagination had been at work, nothing more.

I carefully edged my way back to the entrance and peered out. Nothing. I looked up, but no face hanging over the top of the cave entrance looked back at me. I went out to the ledge in front of the cave and scanned the terrain in all directions. Still nothing.

I picked my way back along the ridge, face to the rock, a rather unpleasantly exposed position, until I was back at the edge of the woods. I waited there for a minute, heart in mouth, listening as carefully as I could.

Then, my face still to the rock wall, I stepped back and down, one foot suspended for a moment feeling for the ground below. The surface found, I shifted my weight down and on to—something squishy. That something was an arm, and it was attached to the body of the former Mihaly Kovacs, antique dealer. I hurtled down the path, stumbling and falling most of the way, got into my car, and drove away.