Martin Walker: The Caves of Perigord

And yet, and yet. They were all the same. Gigantic. Dominating by their very size. Each using the same tricks, the white space between limb and body, the different twists of the horns to hint of a turning, the outflung kick of the legs-he saw them all in his memory, recognized their worth as devices. But they were all the same. There was no balance, no variation of scale. There was simply the worship of dominance, expressing the greatness of bulls by sheer size. He squeezed his eyes tighter, remembering not just the bulls but the beasts around them, the context in which their vastness dominated. Were it not for the delicacy of the horses around them …

The Keeper of the Horses made them large and small, made them toss and browse, understood the horses he made as a herd and as separate, distinct beasts. Deer told himself that he must be honest here in his judgment, must even be cruel. There was no single horse that came close to the bulls as a single work. But it was in the numbers, in the use of them as balance and as artistic forms that lightened the great brooding weight of the bulls, that Deer felt he recognized the touch of a master. The bulls were power, the horses were grace. But the power of the bulls would be ungainly, even crude, without that lightness of the Horses. The Keeper of the Bulls was painting for himself, Deer suddenly thought, but the Keeper of the Horses was painting for the cave. As the thought formed, he expelled a great gust of air, without ever knowing that he had been holding his breath. He felt lightheaded.

Then, so unexpected that his skin seemed to jump, there came a touch on his arm. “My father said that I would find you here,” whispered Little Moon. He could barely see her, just the play of shadows from the torches outside the cave and the gleam of her eyes. “He wants you to wait here until morning, when they come out. He will come to see you then.”

“Why does he want to see me? Did he say?”

“Just that you should wait for him.” She made no move to go, kneeling quietly at his side, her eyes on the cave.

“Does he know that we talked, you and I, Little Moon?”

“I did not tell him,” she said. “I think perhaps my mother did. She asked me, after you had gone, what we had said. And she said that I should know you were disgraced, banished from the cave to work for the women.”

“Does your mother know that you are here now?”

He felt, rather than saw, the quick shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter. I am here on my father’s bidding. But I must go back soon.”

“Not yet,” he said, and ran his hand along the smoothness of her arm. She flinched back, and then relaxed.

“Do you remember what I told you, that you should wait until I am made a Keeper?”

“Yes, I remember,” she whispered. “But this is for my father to decide.”

“He is a good man, Little Moon, and a great worker in the cave, Perhaps the greatest. His beasts love him, and stir with life at his touch.”

“You should not talk of this with me. The cave is not for women.”

“Every other cave of every other clan is for women,” he said. “There are women in other clans who do the work of the cave. I have seen them. It is only us who have this law, and only in this cave.”

“I should like to see it, someday,” she said. “My father says it is a place of marvels.”

“Then you shall, when I am Keeper. I shall show you. I want to show you my work.”

“But you are only an apprentice. They have not let you begin yet.”

“I had passed the last test of the apprentice. I had done my first work, not in the great cave, but far deeper in, where the passage narrows and the floor falls away. That is where the apprentices who are about to be made Keepers do the work that the other Keepers judge. That was where I made my work, my swimming beasts. There is a line of rock within the rock of the cave, a dark and curving line like a river that is in flood. And that was where I plunged my beasts, into this flood as you have seen them swim in the river after winter when the waters rush. They are part of the water, and the water is a part of the rock. They flow together-” His voice broke off. “They are good work, Little Moon, and I would show them to you, my swimming deer.”

She gasped in shock, her hand leaping to her mouth. “You named them! You must not-you named the beasts.”

“Only to you, Little Moon, and you will see them. You will see them and know what they are, and inside your head you will think that these are indeed swimming deer and this is indeed a river. And then you will think like me that naming them in your head is the same as naming them in your mouth, and wonder why we have this strange rule that says we only call them beasts or the work.”

“My father says …” she began, but he interrupted. “This is me speaking now, not your father. This is me, thinking that I do not like this rule that says the cave is not for women, and I do not like this rule of never saying the names of the beasts. And I do not understand the rule that says the work can show bulls and horses and deer and bison and bear, but we never work on the one beast that sustains the people. The reindeer that feed us, that clothe us, that give us their horns for the flint men to work with and the needles for the women to sew with and the hides that make our tents and keep us from the wind and rain, they are not honored in the cave. And this is strange. So many rules are strange.”

She rocked back on her heels, bewildered by his words, which challenged so many of the rules that she had grown up accepting as if they were as much a part of the laws of life as the heat of fire, the wet of rain. And then hearing the names of the beasts, and him telling her more of the cave than she had ever heard, and then saying he would show her. And the touch of his hand on her arm.

“I must go back now,” she said. But did not move.

“I say them only to you, Little Moon. Until this night, I have not even said them to myself.” He let go of her arm. “I will wait here for your father. And I will wait even longer for you.”

She rose, a sudden shiver on her skin although she felt warm, and looked down on him for a long moment before slipping silently back through the trees, and then darting back downhill to the tents of her family.

They came out of the cave at dawn, drawn and silent from the long night watch, to find the women waiting with water and cold meat. As they drank, the spell was broken. Men strolled off to the trees to piss, hawked the cave’s damp from their throats, cleared their noses and broke wind. The Keeper of the Horses paused on the patch of level ground before the cave, looking quickly to left and right, drifting across to the edge of the trees and standing so that he might be seen.

“I await you, Keeper,” came the soft voice. Good, the boy was being careful, still behind the tree. Little Moon must have been clever to have found him. He sidled around to join the youth, led him deeper into the trees.

“Have you learned your lesson now, apprentice?” he asked.

“The lesson of banishment for the fall of an old man that I did not cause? What is there to learn from this?”

“No, the lesson of discipline. The lesson of respect for your elders. The lesson that we must sometimes suffer things without a cause, but accept that suffering for a greater purpose. You have the gift, Deerrunner. Your place is in the cave, with the work, among us.”

“I have respect for my elders, for my teachers, for the workers such as you, or the Keeper of the Bulls. I have much to learn from you.”

“Listen, I want to bring you back into the cave,” he said, gripping Deer by the upper arm, shaking him slightly. “You should be a Keeper by now. You know that. Anyone who has seen your swimming beasts knows that. But I must be able to tell the other Keepers that you have learned the lesson of humility. That you respect the judgment of your elders. Do you hear me, Deer-runner?”