The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

rush of anger and affront, that she had embarked upon the work without the discussion and agreement that had become their custom. He had not asked her about the first line he had drawn on the rolling hill of what became their wall, he recalled. This cave was her work as much as his and he knew the ever-rising level of her skill and the trueness of her eye. In truth, he had nothing left to teach her. He closed his eyes and sat in silence, waiting for them to adjust and to see her work as she was seeing it, and smiling as he thought of her. Weaving, hunting, painting, loving, splashing in the water and tending the fire, skinning the game and sewing the hides into panels for their smoke tent. As brave as a man and as capable, and mistress of all the things that women did. He heard her footsteps approaching, and began to blink.
    “No,” she said firmly. “Don’t open your eyes, not yet. Come, let me guide you.” She helped him to his feet and led him down the passage and into the cave. She took him three, then four paces inside until he thought he must be standing almost in the center, with the great landscape to his left and the tableau of him and Moon and the stag to his right. She stopped him with a hand to his chest, and then came and stood behind him and covered his eyes with her hands.
    “Open them now,” she said, and withdrew her hands, resting them lightly on his cheeks, and he saw himself for the first time. It was him, just his face and shoulders, as he had glimpsed them in the stillness of a pool of water. His hair, thick and curling over his brow and on his shoulders, his shape. He raised his hand to his own jaw, his mouth, his nose, his cheekbones and found her hand there and pressed it.
    “I never thought …” he said, his mouth too dry to speak, his thoughts too confused, his reactions tumbling over each other from shock to fear to admiration. He took a deep breath. “I never thought this could be done. I never knew or dreamed.”
    He stepped forward, breaking the spell that bound him to her, and discovered himself. The painting of him as seen by Moon. He had not known that his eyes were that color of brown with those flecks of green, that his lips were so red, or his nose that shape. He raised his hand to his cheekbone, feeling the sharpness that she had conveyed to the rock. He felt his own jaw, his fingers searching for that groove she had placed in his chin, the corner of his mouth for that half-smile she had given him, his neck for the slim length of it.
    The painting was huge, so much larger than his own head that he felt dwarfed by it. His face was the scale of his chest and stomach, bigger than the stag or the bear or even the great bull in their landscape. He was a giant, but he looked kind. He had a face, but this was more than flesh and bone and eyes. It was a character, a mood, and a person who thought and saw and spoke. This was not just the head of a man, but him, Deer, as seen and re-created by the woman he loved.
    He stepped closer still, to see how those faint lines on each side of his nose had been lightly drawn in charcoal. Then he noted how she had given the depth to his nose by the lighter patch of color on one side, and used a tiny fleck of red in the corner of his eye. And he saw that she had used his trick of the dried grass to catch the texture of his hair.
    He began moving backward, his eyes fixed on the portrait of himself, farther and farther until his back touched the corner of the cave where it opened into the passageway. Now he could see how right she had been to give the head this great size. Balanced by their other work on either side of him, the scale of the portrait was precise and fitting. It dominated the cave without overwhelming it. It put man in his proper place in this universe they had made between them, apart from the beasts and landscape that he shared with them, apart and different, something distinct. A person, a single person, with thought and character and a look that made each human creature unique.
    “This makes you the real Keeper of the Deer,” he said, trying to find words to express his awe at her achievement. “Of this Deer. Me.” He had not noticed her move, but suddenly she was beside him, her hand on his arm.
    “Then you are Keeper of the Moon,” she said, and slipped her arm around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder. She felt his body trembling.
    “This is the most wonderful work I have ever seen,” he said. “I cannot