The cave was not high enough for Doc to stand upright so he squatted holding the torch while I lit the hurricane lamp which he’d brought with him in the rucksack strapped to his back.
I placed the lamp in the middle of the cave where it threw a dim but adequate light and Doc started to examine the walls with the torch beam.
The floor was covered with bat shit. ‘It should smell worse than this.’ Doc took out a box of matches and struck one on the side of his pants. The match flared, momentarily lighting his face. ‘A wind! In here is a wind, from some place else there is coming a wind.’ Doc was right, the flame from the match was flickering and then went out. He shone his torch into the left corner of the cave where a sharp buttress of rock protruded. The torch light played on the rock and as Doc swept the beam to the top of the buttress the light disappeared into a void. We realised that there was an opening beyond it from which came the unmistakable sound of water dripping. We both moved round the back of the rock to discover the opening about four feet above the ground which reached to the ceiling. Doc lit the opening for me to scramble through and he passed the lantern to me and then the torch before following. As he dropped to the ground I swung the powerful torch into the black void.
‘Holy Molenski!’ The torch showed a huge chamber, from the floor and the ceiling of which grew stalactite and stalagmite. The roof of the cave must have been at least forty feet high and the snowy white calcareous structures falling from it, some of which had reached the ground, looked like an illustration from a child’s fairy tale. Pools of infinitely still water on parts of the cave floor mirrored the grotesque shapes, creating an enchanted world which appeared to be carved in crystal.
I handed the torch back to Doc and took up the lantern as we moved forward to explore. Doc kept stopping to train his torch on one or another of the beautiful crystal columns. ‘Absoloodle, absoloodle wunderbar!’ he kept repeating. It was certainly the most amazing natural phenomenon I had ever witnessed and I followed Doc as we explored the huge chamber. We found several fissures in the walls, none of which were wide enough to climb through; we traced the source of the water to a point high in the ceiling from which a constant drip was too rapid for the formation of stalactites. The gradual movement of water seeping through rock collects a load of calcium carbonate, when it finally squeezes through to the ceiling of the cave and reaches the air it sheds its load of calcium carbonate and an infinitely small part of a stalactite is formed. Each drop adds its minute contribution. He pointed to a massive stalactite to our right. ‘Perhaps three hundred thousand years, maybe more.’ Doc’s voice was filled with awe. On the far wall, some sixty feet into the cave, a ledge of rock protruded about fifteen feet from the floor. Above it hung huge spikes of stalactite and clumps of glittering crystals, while directly under the ledge, like grotesque legs to a giant table, stalagmites had grown. A buttress of crystal stalagmite had grown to the one side of the platform to resemble steps leading up to it, so the entire effect was like a magnificent slab held high by crystal shafts with huge spikes of crystallised light suspended above it.
‘Look, Doc, it’s like Merlin’s altar in the crystal cave!’
Doc sucked in his breath, ‘Ja, in such a place went Merlin for sure.’ He pointed to the throne, ‘To lie on this altar and in a hundred and fifty thousand years maybe the body would be a part of this cave. A part of the crystal cave of Africa. Imagine only this, Peekay.’
I grinned. ‘Can you hold off for a while, please Doc, I still need you here.’ The thought of Doc dying had never entered my head. I often thought of him growing old, unable to do things we’d done in the past; but I never thought of him as disappearing, not being there, not being a part of my life. I understood death, it happened at any time. It was a brutal accident like the death of Granpa Chook or Geel Piet, or Big Hettie’s flyweight. Even Big Hettie’s death could be explained in that she was freakishly big and thus fell into the category of unexpected death. Doc did not fall into any of the criteria I had set aside in my mind for death. Doc was calm and reason and order and the kind of death I knew had no part in the expectations for our relationship.
He had walked ahead up to the crystal-like speleothems which formed the steps to the platform. Climbing these, his boots made a scrunching noise on the hard calcium deposits, and soon he stood on the platform. Suddenly, without warning, he squatted and then stretched out full length, so his body was lost from my sight.
‘Ah, come on, Doc! That’s not funny,’ I said, suddenly a little scared. Doc’s torch shone upwards, lighting the stalactites falling from the ceiling above him so that they looked like crystal bolts of lightning frozen in place above him. It was the most frightening and magnificent effect I have ever seen.
Doc’s voice came back to me, sounding serene. ‘It is beautiful, Peekay, we must never tell any person about the crystal cave of Africa.’
‘C’mon, Doc, you’re giving me the creeps,’ I answered, not fully taking in what he had said.
Doc stood up, shining the torch straight into my eyes so that I was blinded by the light. ‘You must promise me, Peekay. It is very important. You must promise, please?’ He withdrew the torch from my face and in the fuzziness the temporary blinding had created he looked just like Merlin, standing between huge spikes of crystal on the platform ten feet above me.
‘Doc, please come down. I promise, now please come down.’
‘Ja, I come. Remember you have promised, Peekay.’ He made his way down from the platform carefully and I ran to give him a hand. He was breathing heavily, and as I helped him down I could feel the excitement in the old man.
We made our way back to the bat cave and Doc shone the Eveready back into the chamber. ‘Peekay, we have found a place in Africa no man has ever seen, the purest magic cave, the crystal cave of Africa.’
‘Come on, Doc, let’s skedaddle, what’s the time?’ He fished into his trouser pocket for his hunter and shone the torch on its face. ‘Half clock ten,’ he said. Doc always told the time in this funny manner.
‘We’ve got to go. If we get back to camp by noon it’ll be dark by the time we get home.’ Fortunately most of the way home was downhill and we knew we would gain a couple of hours on the way back. I calculated it would be around eight that evening before we would be home. Walking the foothills in the dark wouldn’t be much fun and Doc would be exhausted. My anxiety to get going had taken the edge off my excitement. Doc grabbed me by the arm, he was still shaking. ‘Remember, Peekay, this is our cave, the crystal cave belongs only to you and to me.’
‘Okay, Doc, I promise. I already promised. Now let’s get the hell out of here.’ It wasn’t at all like Doc to be so insistent, anyway he knew he could trust me implicitly. The cave had had a tremendous effect on him and I knew he’d want us to come back, though I doubted that he’d be able to make such a tough climb for much longer. I’d cut the rope we’d taken into the cave but had left the rope handrail intact for Doc to use getting out. Once we were back on the ledge I began to retrieve the two metal spikes, as we’d already lost two by having to leave them embedded in the tunnel wall.
‘No, leave them, Peekay,’ Doc said suddenly, ‘there is no time.’ It was unlike Doc, who was always very careful about equipment. We’d account for everything before moving on from a camp site or where we had been collecting specimens. It was the first time he had ever been devious and I realised how emotionally charged he had become over the crystal cave; the old bugger was determined to come back.
We arrived back in the foothills above the town just as a giant moon was coming up over the escarpment, flooding the de Kaap valley in silver light. It was a full moon again and that was always a difficult time for me. It had been a full moon when Granpa Chook died and while the memory of that funny old rooster had dimmed, when the moon was full memories came galloping through the silver night to sadden me. It had also been a full moon when Geel Piet had died.