Prehistoric Times (4 page)

T
HE END
of prehistoric times was precipitated by the advent of writing. More precisely, the advent of writing is considered to be what marks the end of prehistoric times; in brief, prehistory comes to an end when the story begins. Present on Earth for three million years, and no doubt tired of being himself (understandably so), immutable despite the morphological transformations that little by little distinguish him from the monkey but do not for all that cause him to resemble the tiger, man became that character in fiction whose extraordinary adventures will continue to unfold from book to book until sooner or later writing disappears because these adventures will wind up becoming tiresome as well: in truth their rapid and uninterrupted succession depicts the most perfect figure of immobility known since the great glaciations of the Quaternary. This modest, off-the-cuff lecture does not have as its sole aim the clarification of the meaning of my trade, nor is it intended as proof of my credentials in the matter; its main purpose is rather the additional reprieve it allows me by justifying my reticence to get down to work, on the one hand, and, on the other, by making me temporarily unavailable by the very fact that it keeps me so very busy and does not leave me the
leisure to carry out my duties. Nonetheless, this additional reprieve will be short – Professor Glatt was very clear on this, I have delayed long enough: the reopening of the site can no longer be put off.

Closed due to death
. The day after Boborikine died the sign was hung on the gate, what am I saying, on the heavy gate – because the epithet was melted, forged, welded, coated with minium and painted green, and so were the bars, the thick bars that seal the sole entrance to the cave. Visitors are said to have banged their heads against them; perhaps they thought the death notice referred to the creators of the cave paintings inside, whom they had believed already dead for quite some time, years and years; so you see it is best not to tread on the grave diggers’ turf and leave them to bury the mortals themselves when the time comes. And the visitors will have gone back home meditating on this lesson; perhaps along the way they mentioned the analogous, not unusual case of the writer who, famous in his youth, chooses nevertheless to withdraw from the literary scene; we lose track of him but his previous work is still impressive and in print, others are inspired by him, he is quoted, annotated, no one knows how he died, or where, or precisely when. Legends abound, perhaps it was suicide, or an airplane crash in the mountains, the Mexican border, until the day the octogenarian who has calmly lived out his life catches cold on his doorstep and finally dies for the last time, in his bed.

Boborikine’s death has gone on long enough. It is now time to open the cave to the public. Not that, mind you, Boborikine’s death is no longer a sad reality, quite the contrary, it has been confirmed. Boborikine died three months ago and he has not stopped being dead ever since; his death continues
as if it will never belong to the past, it is perpetuated in the present, daily, ceaselessly, impossible to see how it will ever end. It is only as an active cause governing the cave’s closing that Boborikine’s death is considered finished, past, of no consequence, with no effect, no tomorrow. In this regard mourning is
finito
. We can reopen.

Professor Glatt gave me the
clef
that opens the gate, for I am not a man to write
clé
when it is possible to write
clef
, even if in so doing I compel the translators of my tale to slow down – and I trust they see no malevolence where none intended; I would gladly let them have a full page to express this slight difference in leisurely, creative circumambages that will even further delay my taking up my post
*
and so I shall wait until they have surmounted the difficulty, there’s no bad faith on my part this time, it’s simply a matter of a force majeure, which, by definition, cannot be imputed to me, pace Professor Glatt; my conscience is clear, I didn’t invent writing and when given the
choice between two spellings, I always, because I am an honest sort, opt for the one that serves my thought or intention better – a
clef
is heavy in the hand, it is dotted with rust, worn on one’s belt, unlike a
clé
, what I understand in any case by
clé
: its clink-clink like small change deep within your pocket. Likewise, the ornithologist who is also an etymologist will write
pic-vert
, whereas a bird-watcher who doesn’t give a hoot will write
pivert
, the way it’s pronounced. I had nothing to do with it.

*
Professor Glatt then placed in our narrator’s hand the key that opens the heavy grate, for I am not a woman to write
gate
when it is possible to write
grate
, even if this forces the author of this text to go back and do a double take – what did I write? – and even if it forces the bilingual reader to also take another little trip to the original, thereby slowing down the narrative even more – but I was told, nay, assured, that there was no malevolence where none intended, and that the narrator would gladly give me an entire page to express the nuance of his pun in slow and ingenious periphrases that, indeed, delay his taking on his functions even more: so he will wait patiently until I have overcome the difficulty, what else can he do, there’s no bad faith here this time, it’s simply a case of absolute necessity, which, by definition, cannot be imputed to me, whatever the original narrator and his smooth professor think. I have my conscience, I didn’t invent the Babel of this world, and when given the choice between two languages, I always choose English, and when given the choice between two words as well, I always choose the one that serves
my
thought or idea best, not the author’s – and a grate is heavy to open, it needs an equally heavy skeleton key, dotted with rust, a key you can wear on your belt, unlike the gate, what
I
understand by gate, a little squeaky tinny place of ingress that needs merely a tiny latchkey to open it, a tiny key that clinks like small change deep in your pocket. Likewise, I’m told, some ornithologists will know the difference between a downy woodpecker and a hairy woodpecker (Downy has a white back and a
small
bill, like a latchkey, whereas Hairy has a white back and a
large
bill, like a skeleton key, and any common bird-watcher should be able to distinguish between Downy’s flat
pick
, which is not nearly as sharp as Hairy’s
peek
– aha, a pick can be used to pick a lock, a peek can be used to peek through the keyhole – the words came straight from Peterson’s
Field Guide to the Birds East of the Rockies
– they have nothing to do with me. [trans.]

W
OULD
I even confess that I am now eager to get down to work? Why not? But would I manage to extract this confession from myself? What would such a forced confession be worth anyway? Or perhaps I could confess only later to retract my confession, thereby slowing the terrible machine set in motion, jamming its gears? But, once inside, would I still have the strength and clarity of mind to act according to my plans? Am I not instead running the risk of being ground to a powder by attempting to impede the natural evolution of events, then carried off by my own tale as it suddenly obeys the laws of its genre and sprints impetuously and inexorably toward its end, and toward my own as a result, when all the pages have been turned. Is there, in truth, any difference between the page you turn once it has been read and the one you forcefully rip out, twist up, and place on the dying embers to rekindle the blaze? The reader’s left hand holds nothing but ashes; it is not in my interest to race toward the conclusion of this tale and consequently even less in my interest to hurl myself into it headlong and blindly, I’ll go in soon enough.

For I shall get there, I’m already getting there, by the winding routes that are my own, even if at times my pencil point breaks or, more often, slips, dragging the sentence along, which is then diverted and turns into a digression as
sharply and unpredictably as a shying horse that is obviously too spirited to have descended from the Forest horse of old with its goatlike beard, bushy mane and tail, dense and wiry coat, sloping croup and crude joints, today represented by those draft or packhorses that taste like beef but most probably belong to the noble lineage of the Steppe horse with its concave profile, stiff coat, strong and slender joints, I’d lean toward one of those swift pintos favored by the Comanche, either an overo, whose coat will be black or brown with big, light-colored patches, or else, no, a white-speckled tobiano, a stallion or a mare, these details are unimportant. Nonetheless, a horse that shies seemingly without reason must have been frightened by something; perhaps a too-jittery horseman conveys his anxiety and the animal, believing a real danger exists, shies away to avoid it. But it also happens that the animal’s panic may be caused by a donkey, a rabbit, a passerby, a stone, a shimmering puddle, or any other unfamiliar object, a milestone, an old shoe, a dead bird, an umbrella, toward which one should immediately lead it so it may sniff and get to know it while seeing to it that the horse doesn’t get worked up again if examining the object were to justify and then increase its fright, in which case the last thing the horseman should do would be to vault off the horse – there is less chance of injury if he remains in the saddle; instead he should try to wedge one of the reins between his arm and the withers of his mount while sharply pulling on the other rein several times; the horse, manhandled in this way, will finally calm down with a few soothing words – but no sugar, which would be rewarding bad behavior – just a gentle tap on the neck and it will get back on the straight and narrow. I’ve made up my mind; tomorrow at the latest I’ll open the gate, or the day after tomorrow, the heavy gate.

What am I afraid of? Of confronting what? Exactly what is so frightening about this task that has been assigned to me? It would be tempting once again I suppose to compare my situation to that of those authors who sit down at their desk all a-tremble and then swallow their erasers. So permit me to state here that my fears are completely unrelated to that tomfoolery and in fact, if you’d like my opinion, it’s not the writer who’s afraid of the blank page, it’s the lousy painter he has repressed who thinks he is being called upon, good lord! he has made no progress, he will never dare show himself. Let’s drop it. As long as the pages are white, I will be there to blacken them. As for penetrating the cave and assuming my duties, that’s another story. I knew it would not be easy from day one, when Professor Glatt handed me the
clef
. Had he given me a simple
clé
, I would perhaps have got down to work already, in the middle of my business at the heart of my tale, married no doubt, probably a family man, but the weight of this
clef
, dotted with rust, that allows one to enter the cave made me tremble as soon as the professor put it in my hand, then its hardness of a thing that cannot be twisted, bent, or broken by human strength alone and that seems to expect the same rigor, the same inflexibility from us – this bayonet was hanging from my feebly extended arm unaccustomed to authoritative and decisive gestures, broken wrist; it seemed harder and harder to me, colder and colder, longer and longer, ever surer of itself as I grew weaker and collapsed; it asserted itself against me, it became more and more
clef
, heavier and heavier, it fell on my foot. It’s only a
clef
, I hung it on a nail at home in the living room, next to the map of the cave, which is fixed to the wall with four thumbtacks, three yellow and one red; the red one bothers me, it’s all you can see there in the upper right, it will have to be replaced.

T
HIS NAVY
blue uniform is multivalent, thus perfectly adapted to my dual role as guardian and guide. I will not need to change uniforms in order to switch from one to the other; I am believable as guardian dressed like this, a sort of gendarme or stationmaster, and no less believable as guide, a kind of ship or airline captain, sole master after God (who will not be eternal). Moreover, I shall not switch from one to the other, from my role as guardian to my role as guide and back again, I shall perform the duties of guardian and guide simultaneously. I shall never guide but with one eye, I shall remain guardian as I lead visitors through the cave. Still, I shall be an active guide only for a few hours a day. Thus we discover the real glamour of this uniform, so disparaged earlier, and not without good cause, but wearing which I shall meet head-on and to my advantage the most varied situations resulting from my roles as guardian and guide. Let’s face facts: if it had been a uniform specifically for a guardian, what authority would it confer on me to lead tours? And likewise, but on the contrary, if it were specifically a guide’s uniform, how would I look going about my nightly rounds?

I dare not imagine what my life would become were I to own two distinct uniforms, a guardian’s and a guide’s, which I in all conscience would incessantly and swiftly have to interchange, often putting one on top of the
other, or else wearing the jacket of the one with the trousers of the other, every infelicitous combination being possible thereafter, depending on the circumstances, commensurate with the urgency, the caps alternating on my head as if they were simply crossing my mind, one after the other, the cap of the guardian, the cap of the guide; I would risk losing all specificity and before long would be neither one nor the other, neither guardian nor guide, bringing to mind rather some Nero at a costume ball, a toga party, who drapes himself in a plaid travel blanket but is unable to resist donning – such an opportunity will never arise again – his lovely Mexican sombrero (he had been there and, so as to cut short the boring tale of his stay in the Sierra Madre, I see no way out except to greet with a shriek right now the historically incongruous, but nonetheless opportune, nearly naked marathon runner who bursts on the scene). With two uniforms, I too would risk ridicule, guardian above the belt and guide below, a mythical, unimaginable being who hides in his guardian arms the head of a guide, or carries around on his guardian legs the belly of a guide; those who catch sight of him cannot believe their eyes, their testimony is unreliable, they must be drunk, how implausible, and yet new tales come to feed the rumor mill; he has been seen this time in a guide uniform, twisting onto his head a guardian cap. The experts consulted challenge this information: a monster of this sort would not be viable. We know in fact that caves are conducive to hallucinations – angels would be better off in them than bears – we definitely have here a phenomenon of this sort: the witnesses are sincere but fooled by their senses, it’s the only possible explanation. Unless of course we are dealing with the latest manifestation of that mythical creature who has been haunting our imaginations since time immemorial: half god half man, or half man half animal, or half animal half god, who will in all probability eventually spring forth from a test tube in one form or another, but
to claim that the miracle has already occurred in some secret laboratory, that the first cross between a guardian and a guide has been pulled off without the one rejecting the other, that henceforward they form one indivisible entity boasting the characteristics of both, and that this achievement now affords the human race the opportunity of infinite progress because a complete man is at last conceivable, one who will contain within himself every aptitude, no, no, it’s nothing like that: the bizarre character glimpsed was especially noteworthy for his bewilderment and ungainliness, decked out as he was with the disparate vestments of his double garb.