eventually, it was up to Hugo to declare that surely it was dawn outside. And besides, he said, the ammonia had got to him. He had a headache and was fighting nausea.
Luc was reluctant to leave until he had completed at least a cursory examination of the entire complex, however daunting the task. There always seemed to be one more nook, one more chamber and gallery, each graced with creatures as fresh as the day they were painted. However, the deeper they got, the more they had to compete with bats, frantically unappreciative of the light.
Luc persuaded Hugo to bear with him a little longer, to explore one more chamber, one more gallery until they came to what appeared to be a dead end, a completely unpainted cul-de-sac, thick with bat droppings, almost choking them with stench. Luc was about to declare their night at an end and perhaps surrender to exhaustion and his own ammonia-sickness when his beam caught a small opening to his right, a hole through the wall that was just large enough to crawl through, if one had the temerity.
Luc removed his rucksack and left it behind. Hugo knew it was pointless to try to stop him. He refused to follow, though he had no desire to stay on his own because the ceiling was moving with roosting bats, stimulated by the intrusion and occasionally taking to flight. He could almost feel leathery wing tips brush his face and he struggled to control his breathing. He couldn’t bear training his light on the roiling mass overhead and he was equally unwilling to be in the dark so he shone his torch in the direction of the hole. The best he could do was plead with Luc to hurry up while he kept his face tightly covered by cloth. He shuddered when Luc’s soles disappeared into the blackness.
Luc gingerly crept through several metres of hard narrowness. He had the uncanny sensation of crawling through a birth canal.
Suddenly he was able to stand inside a small vault, the size of a modest sitting room. He shone his torch in sweeping arcs and blinked in awe at what he saw. While he was wetting his lips to call Hugo, he realised he was merely in an anteroom, of sorts. A larger chamber was just ahead, an igloo-shaped dome that literally left him gasping for air.
‘Hugo, you must come!’
In a minute, Hugo emerged on all fours to join him, grumbling and growling, but when he stood he let out an enthusiastic ‘Christ!’
The entire antechamber was festooned with hands stencilled in red ochre, 360 degrees of hand prints, lefts and rights, all the same size, giving the room the appearance of a planetarium with the hands as stars.
Luc beckoned him, ‘Come here!’
The walls of the final chamber were lavishly painted – that was hardly a surprise – but there were no animals. Not a single one.
Luc said, ‘I was wondering, what about those other pictures in Barthomieu’s book – what about the plants? Look!’
They were in a garden, a paradise. There were panels of green vines with stellate leaves, shrub-like plants with red berries, and on one wall a veritable sea of tall ochre and brown grasses, each stalk individually drawn, all of them bent in the same direction, as if a wind was bearing down. And standing in the middle of this savannah was a life-sized man rendered in black outline, a much-larger version of the bird man from the bison hunt, arms extended, hugely priapic, facing the direction of the unseen wind with his beak open. Calling, perhaps calling.
‘It’s our hero,’ Luc quietly said, fumbling with his lens cap.
There was no question the time had come to leave. There was nothing left to explore and Luc and Hugo were physically and mentally spent, both suffering from overexposure to the foul air. There were only so many ways that Luc could repeat that what they were experiencing was unprecedented. The animals were superbly naturalistic and in many ways unique for their quality and abundance but there was nothing remotely comparable to this depiction of flora in Paleolithic
Luc was reluctant to leave until he had completed at least a cursory examination of the entire complex, however daunting the task. There always seemed to be one more nook, one more chamber and gallery, each graced with creatures as fresh as the day they were painted. However, the deeper they got, the more they had to compete with bats, frantically unappreciative of the light.
Luc persuaded Hugo to bear with him a little longer, to explore one more chamber, one more gallery until they came to what appeared to be a dead end, a completely unpainted cul-de-sac, thick with bat droppings, almost choking them with stench. Luc was about to declare their night at an end and perhaps surrender to exhaustion and his own ammonia-sickness when his beam caught a small opening to his right, a hole through the wall that was just large enough to crawl through, if one had the temerity.
Luc removed his rucksack and left it behind. Hugo knew it was pointless to try to stop him. He refused to follow, though he had no desire to stay on his own because the ceiling was moving with roosting bats, stimulated by the intrusion and occasionally taking to flight. He could almost feel leathery wing tips brush his face and he struggled to control his breathing. He couldn’t bear training his light on the roiling mass overhead and he was equally unwilling to be in the dark so he shone his torch in the direction of the hole. The best he could do was plead with Luc to hurry up while he kept his face tightly covered by cloth. He shuddered when Luc’s soles disappeared into the blackness.
Luc gingerly crept through several metres of hard narrowness. He had the uncanny sensation of crawling through a birth canal.
Suddenly he was able to stand inside a small vault, the size of a modest sitting room. He shone his torch in sweeping arcs and blinked in awe at what he saw. While he was wetting his lips to call Hugo, he realised he was merely in an anteroom, of sorts. A larger chamber was just ahead, an igloo-shaped dome that literally left him gasping for air.
‘Hugo, you must come!’
In a minute, Hugo emerged on all fours to join him, grumbling and growling, but when he stood he let out an enthusiastic ‘Christ!’
The entire antechamber was festooned with hands stencilled in red ochre, 360 degrees of hand prints, lefts and rights, all the same size, giving the room the appearance of a planetarium with the hands as stars.
Luc beckoned him, ‘Come here!’
The walls of the final chamber were lavishly painted – that was hardly a surprise – but there were no animals. Not a single one.
Luc said, ‘I was wondering, what about those other pictures in Barthomieu’s book – what about the plants? Look!’
They were in a garden, a paradise. There were panels of green vines with stellate leaves, shrub-like plants with red berries, and on one wall a veritable sea of tall ochre and brown grasses, each stalk individually drawn, all of them bent in the same direction, as if a wind was bearing down. And standing in the middle of this savannah was a life-sized man rendered in black outline, a much-larger version of the bird man from the bison hunt, arms extended, hugely priapic, facing the direction of the unseen wind with his beak open. Calling, perhaps calling.
‘It’s our hero,’ Luc quietly said, fumbling with his lens cap.
There was no question the time had come to leave. There was nothing left to explore and Luc and Hugo were physically and mentally spent, both suffering from overexposure to the foul air. There were only so many ways that Luc could repeat that what they were experiencing was unprecedented. The animals were superbly naturalistic and in many ways unique for their quality and abundance but there was nothing remotely comparable to this depiction of flora in Paleolithic
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