Aislinn Hunter - The World Before Us

The Dordogne was greener and lusher than the parts of France Jane had visited before. As they drove toward the caves in the early morning a mist was lifting off the fields, clouding the drowsy heads of the sunflowers, dissipating around the stocky bulls grazing in their pastures. It was the first time Henri had taken Jane and Lewis anywhere without Claire. She’d backed out of the trip at the last minute because of a deadline, saying she’d meet them in Paris, though by the time they’d packed their things in Toulouse even that was in doubt. Jane had overheard them having an argument on the phone the morning they left for the caves and Henri’s annoyance had been palpable for the first part of the drive, but by the time they exited the motorway and started heading west, wending through a series of compact villages and driving under the rocky overhang of the Dordogne’s cliffs, he’d softened. He began talking about his own childhood, how his father had brought him here when he was ten or so, just a little bit younger than Lewis.

There were no tickets left for the English tours of the cave so Henri bought tickets for the French. Jane’s French was tolerable but Lewis’s was almost non-existent. Henri said he’d translate, and ruffled Jane’s hair as they walked toward the bridge where the tour started. “But Jane will understand everything perfectly, n’est-ce pas ?”

The tour guide was a man in his fifties in a baggy knit sweater. He introduced himself as Marc, and midway through his preamble he stopped and smiled at Lewis. “ Anglais? ” Lewis blushed, and Marc turned to a couple in blue rain slickers. “ Et vous? Vous parlez français? ”

The man replied, “We are German.”

“Okay.” Marc smiled. “I will try to do French and English if that is acceptable.” He surveyed the French speakers — a family of five and two young women with daypacks — to make sure they didn’t mind and then clapped his hands together. “Parfait.”

Before he unlocked the iron door that led to the cave Marc explained the rules of the tour: no bags past the entry, no touching the walls, not even with shoulders; we move quickly and stay close because our time inside is limited . He looked at the German man and at Henri, and explained that there would be narrow passageways, and a Rubicon where it would be necessary to crouch down. “You see?” he said to the German in English. “Ducking?” And he bowed his head to make sure the man understood. Jane was closest to the large iron door that had been set into the cave wall, and as Marc took out his ring of keys to unlock the six bolts that crossed it he smiled at her. “ Vous êtes prête, mademoiselle? You ready?”

What struck Jane about the caves was how difficult it was to see anything at all on the walls until the marks were pointed out. The lighting was dim to preserve the paintings and her eyes were slow to adjust. At a short railing, Marc stopped the group and gestured overhead. “I will give you a moment,” he said. “See what you see.” Jane scanned the convex limestone above her, the layers of rock yellow at her height but a brighter eggshell white above. There was a pool of brown to her right, but no shape she could distinguish clearly. Marc lifted a laser pointer to the brown stain and he used its red beam to trace the head, hump and chine of a bison. “Look here.” He moved the pointer a foot to the right. “And here.” The French girl behind Jane, the one whose perfume smelled like sweets, gasped, and Jane understood — she, too, was startled. How suddenly clear they were: two bison face to face, their delicate heads and rust-coloured horns bowed in front of their thick brown bodies.

“Look,” Marc said, running the pointer over the bison’s thin legs. “The artists are using perspective. Dimensionality, non ? We had it and then we lost it.”

When her eyes had adjusted more fully to the subdued light, Jane could see that the bison were both painted and carved. Their backs and bellies were incised, their eyes scored into the stone; pupils the size of tuning pegs seemed to follow her when she shifted back and forth.

Marc smiled at her. “Yes, good. It is almost like it is moving. The whole herd is running. Imagine the flame of a torch as our ancestors passed through here.” He moved his hand back and forth under the curl of the bison’s stomach. “How it would catch the folds and curves of the cave wall. Undulating, non ? They are alive, you see.”

Marc stood back and let everyone take turns standing underneath the two bison. When Lewis, the last of the group, went up, Marc asked him, “How many do you see?” and Lewis glanced up the corbelled vault of the cave and answered, “Two? Maybe three?”

“Come close, everyone.” Marc ushered the group together. “Look again,” he said, “ regardez .” And he passed one of the floor lights over the upper reaches of the chamber to where a dozen bison grazed along a horizontal plane. “You were surrounded,” he said cheerfully, “this whole time.”

After Jane had finished telling William about the cave she turned to him and saw that he was grinning. She’d been talking for ten minutes, maybe more; it was the most she’d ever said to him. She’d been trying to articulate a thought — about what it was like to be shown something, to have a person wave a red laser over a russet stain, trace the lines of a reindeer’s back until its thick black antlers and gentle face materialized. “In this one there is kissing,” Marc had said, and although he was joking he wasn’t exactly wrong. It was one of the clearer paintings: the incised tongue of the larger reindeer touching the head of the one with red horns kneeling before it.

Shortly before they got to Inglewood, Lily spilled the last of her juice over the Saab’s back seat. She announced the accident and Jane unclipped her seat belt and turned around. She took the plastic cup from Lily’s hand and used a fistful of tissues from the box on the floor to dab the bib of Lily’s red overalls, mop up the puddle that had gathered around a button on the upholstery. She felt the car slowing down.

“Do you want me to pull over?”

“Nope, almost done.” She tapped Lily on the nose with her finger. “Better?”

Lily lifted up her plastic pony; there were beads of apple juice in its glossy pink mane.

William was still driving slowly. “I’d feel better if you were buckled up.”

Jane dried the pony, wiped Lily’s booster seat around her legs, then swivelled back down onto the passenger seat. She lifted her hips to smooth the clump of her sundress and refastened her seat belt. When she glanced down to see if her hands were sticky she noticed that the front hem of her dress had settled a few inches above her knees, the half-moon scar she’d earned in a riding accident when she was seven noticeably white against her summer tan. She left the hem where it was and looked out the window at the patchwork of farmers’ fields. A test, she thought. To see if what she wanted to happen, what she thought had happened the night William woke her on the sofa, was actually occurring.

Jane rolled down the window when they exited the highway. At the first sign for Inglewood, William, his eyes on the road, asked, “How did you get that scar?”

Jane told the story about the cave twice that day, first to William on the drive up and then, later, to Constable Mobbs. An hour before Jane’s grandparents were due to arrive, Mobbs reappeared, pulling a chair up to the desk where Jane was sitting. Mobbs’s face was red as if she’d been running and for a second Jane thought there might be some news.

“You holding up okay?”

Jane felt her chin wobble and her eyes begin to well so she turned back to the swinging spheres of the contraption on Holmes’s desk and knocked the end ball with her knuckle.