“I was in Appeldorn, one of the Dutch military bases, on a NATO course and we took a weekend off to go to Amsterdam. They had this Vermeer exhibition. Just by chance, since I had nothing better to do that morning, I went along, and fell in love with this girl. Carried this with me ever since. In Northern Ireland sometimes, when it was really bad, I’d take her out and look at her and feel better.”
“Why not a photo of your children?” asked Lydia.
“Your own children are the kind of distraction that can get you killed-the last thing you want to think about at times like that,” he said grimly. “Believe me.”
“So which souvenir image do you want from Lascaux?” Clothilde asked. “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 Perigord 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 Perigord 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 Vezere Valley, 15,000 B.C.
The 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 from the time of his birth, and the one who had helped him finish the coloring of the bison, to be his pupil. He would rather have chosen Moon-and he now thought of her as simply “Moon”-not for what she meant to him but simply for her talent. The other Keepers had embraced him, and the Keeper of the Bulls had managed barely to touch him during his cursory contact. And that had been all.
Without knowing exactly what to expect, he had expected more. Perhaps a ritual introduction to the beasts of the cave, or a token contribution to the work of each of the other Keepers, or a common sacrifice at the entrance fire. But no, not even a feast. This had been a routine business at the close of a routine day, and Deer felt diminished by it. Dry Leaf was looking up at him with stars in his eyes, finally believing that he too one day might ascend to the splendid rank of Keeper. Deer could not let his disappointment show before the lad, and so gave him firm instructions on the colors he would need for the morrow, and sent him scampering off down the hill, looking younger than Deer thought he had every been.
“Come eat at my fire this night,” said the Keeper of the Horses, and took him closely by the arm to lead him downhill, saying nothing, but making a ceremony of it.
At his fire, all the Keeper’s kin were gathered, standing to welcome them. Sons and daughters and baby grandchildren, even his woman’s brothers. This was a full assembly, as if for a funeral or-his hopes leaped-a betrothal. Moon darted to the water skin hanging on its tripod and thrust two handful of moss into the water that had been warmed by hot stones. She withdrew them, dripping, and handed one to her father and the other to Deer, her eyes downcast.
“Welcome to this hearth, Keeper of the Deer,” she said, her voice not quite even. They sluiced off the dust of the day. Deer sniffed the air and looked down at the roasting meat on the spit above the fire. Moon bent and gave the spit a quarter turn, and then took some wild herbs from a beveled stone and sprinkled them onto the glistening surface. He smiled in pleasure at the girl’s concentration on her task.
The Keeper’s woman handed a wooden bowl to her husband and another to him, and made her own welcome. Deer sipped at the fermented honey, sweet and yet sour at the same time, and burning a little in his throat. He had never drunk it before, but had helped the old man reel into his furs after taking too much of this drink with his cronies.
As they drank, he saw a small parade of torches coming toward them. The Keeper of the Ibex, the Keeper of the Bear, with their wives and apprentices. Each woman bore a wooden bowl, and they kneeled to him in turn, laying the offerings of berries, nuts, and sweet pine kernels at his feet. As if from nowhere, Dry Leaf was standing proudly at his elbow, and in his hand was the old man’s lamp, fresh-filled and lit, making the boy’s face lively with the dancing lights of the flame. Someone must have told the lad what to do. He felt both glad and angry that the Keeper of the Bulls had not come, comprehending that this made it a private festivity in the absence of any official one.