Free Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard, Alyson Waters

try to train it to take another route. Yet I must conscientiously explore every direction on paper before I venture into the cave, I will not wander about at random, if you think I would, you don’t know me, I’d probably get lost and never come out. How could one not lose one’s way in the twisting, turning, infinitely branching galleries, so dangerous it’s as if they’re booby-trapped, with sudden slopes in the ground or ceiling and the unanticipated retrenchment of the practicable path between the rough walls that scrape my shoulders and sides and bruise my bones, and the passageways, dark despite the electricity that’s been installed, and the rolling mills, the swallow holes, the ventilation shafts where I slip feetfirst, dead already, ignorant of what lies in wait on the other side, perhaps the void, a hole, a precipitous drop, perhaps the tumbled, crumbled wall of a blind alley, or else a bright, airy room where the sun abseils through a narrow shaft and cools off in a natural lake, miraculously round, that glimmers more appropriately, and tinkles like glass when suddenly a fat, warm drop falls from the dark vault pierced by the violet sparks of the stalactites; you’ll seethat this thunderstorm, petrified for millennia, will awaken today, now: it’s breaking out behind me, I run aimlessly, shoulders hunched, back rounded; count the ridges on my carapace to see how old I am, I think I’m retracing my steps, all I do is step on my own feet, a child slips away from me and climbs up the steep path ahead of him on all fours while the old man for whom I was also responsible slides down into the lower galleries, I form a crowd, the lions are let loose, I spread myself in all of panic’s directions, but the lake in spate catches up to me wherever I am, submerging me, my lungs explode, my rosy cheeks fade, I float with the eyeless, memoryless transparent fish, the last living contemporaries of all the fossils, liquid specters of the Precambrian Era that still haunt the watery depths. I belong among them, from now on their future is mine, and all that because I ventured into the cave without proper preparation: madness. Obviously I shall do no such thing until I know the premises perfectly. I shall devote the time it takes to a preliminary study of the map. I shall learn how to move about the cave on paper, as if I were at home, eyes shut, hands behind my back, with steady steps, a blind homeowner circumventing every obstacle, stepping over crevices thanks to the reflexes I’ll have acquired, all will be second nature. But none of this will be possible unless I manage to get hold of a fourth yellow thumbtack.
    Boborikine’s drawers were not emptied. His personal effects were moved, linens, books, and those small odds and ends, the hideous ornamental knick-knacks (except for a one-eyed frog made of shells that I threw back into the water), but neither the drawers in the living room highboy nor the one in the bedroom nightstand were cleaned out. I shall therefore have to itemize their contents and the inevitable enumeration presaged here will end assoon as I have found the yellow thumbtack I need, which could happen very quickly if, for example, I were to find one in the first drawer of the highboy, buried beneath the knot of rubber bands, three green, three blue, one red, one white – and there truly is something poignant about the chance convergence of so many unforeseeable destinies. But no, no thumbtack under there, just a paper clip. Let’s carry on with the inventory. Nothing I remove from the drawer will go back in there; the lot will wind up in the wastebasket so that should my efforts bear no fruit I will at least have gained a speck more space for my own little belongings.
    So, this first drawer, in addition to the rubber bands and the paper clip, harbored the following: another paper clip, two postcards ( Mimizan-Plage , in black and white; and Breton Gastronomy , a color print of an oyster platter where