The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

“The falling horse, the two bison, the great bull?”
    “No, I think I’d take the swimming deer, except that now I’ve seen Lascaux, I already know the one I want.” He pulled out one of Lydia’s Polaroids of the small bull he had brought to her the day they met. “All the others from Lascaux go together, and I don’t want to select just one. I would feel happier just with this one that was mine, at least for a while, even if we never see it again.”

    When they got back into their own cars at Malrand’s place, Clothilde steered Lydia into her own car and told Manners to follow. As her little convertible roared up Malrand’s drive, Lydia realized nervously that she was in for a woman-to-woman chat. Never a prospect she much relished, she felt at a disadvantage. Despite her liking for the woman, Clothilde was formidable, and Lydia was not ready to question herself about her feelings toward Manners, let alone face an inquisition.
    “You aren’t sleeping with him yet, are you?” Clothilde began.
    “I was thinking of a similar question about you and Malrand.”
    “We had a very pleasant spring and summer a long time ago, when I had just got my doctorate and just before he went into politics.”
    “Wasn’t he married then?”
    “Yes, she was one of those Parisian literary ladies. Preferred to stay in St-Germain. We had the Périgord to ourselves. But you’re changing the subject. You’re falling for the handsome major, no?”
    “Falling in love? I don’t think so. Attracted, certainly. Interested, yes. He’s an entertaining companion, but quite a private one. There are lots of depths to him, parts I haven’t been allowed anywhere near. I don’t mean the military stuff. More the way his mind works. That question he raised in the car, about whether somebody might have been blocking your project deliberately. I didn’t think his mind worked that way.”
    “Suspicious, you mean, or intuitive?”
    “Both. He presents himself as a simple soldier, very straightforward, everything on the surface. Then suddenly you see a hint of something much deeper. Looking back at how he maneuvered me into coming to Périgord with him, I think I first saw it then.”
    “Some of his depths are charming. Like his little Vermeer girl. Any woman would feel challenged by that, to replace that work of oil with an image of herself next to his heart. But it is very flattering that he went to such trouble to get you here, no? And if you want to satisfy your curiosity, there’s only one way.”
    “Take him to bed, you mean?”
    “Why not? At the worst, you’d have fun. He moves like a capable lover. Did you see him start to dance in the cave?”
    “That was the moment I was most attracted to him. It seemed so natural, like the real him, wide open to joy.”
    “You’ll never know until you try him out,” said Clothilde. “I bought one of those silly souvenir ashtrays when I was a young girl, which carried an old saying on the base—‘Men are like melons, you have to squeeze a thousand before you find a really good one.’ My mother was very shocked.”
    They drove through the town to Clothilde’s surprisingly modern house on a hill overlooking a great bend of the river. They parked, and Clothilde led them through a narrow front door into a long, wide room filled with light from the sliding glass door that overlooked her terrace and the river. At the terrace table, a man was sitting and smoking, a bottle of still sealed champagne and a bunch of roses beside him.
    “Horst,” cried Clothilde. “What a lovely surprise.”

CHAPTER 14
The Vézère Valley, 15,000 B.C.
    T he new Keeper of the Deer, who still thought of himself as plain Deer, felt considerably confused. The ceremony had been brief and almost casual, the Keeper of the Bulls gabbling through his words of praise and welcome into brotherhood, while his sponsor, the Keeper of the Horses, fumed silently at his side. His treasured possession, the lamp of the Keeper of the Bison, had been taken from him at the village and then brusquely returned to him in the cave. The other Keepers had lit his way to the rear passage, stumbling around the stepped bend, and praised his bison and his swimming deer. The Keeper of the Bulls had then lit his lamp with his own, and stomped back to the cave entrance where the apprentices waited, awed by their guess at whatever mysteries had been vouchsafed to their former fellow. Deer chose the youngest of them, called Dry Leaf