Free Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard, Alyson Waters Page B

Angèle’s childish signature on the back and a sweet dedication to her uncle (Angèle’s character is taking on depth in spite of everything; with the passing pages we are getting to know her, and we’ll wind up growing fond of this niece of Boborikine’s), a champagne cork, a yellow, perforated botanic label (missing the wire bracelet that wounds plants’ ankles) bearing an inscription written in pencil: Ornithogalum . Some will furtively recognize the furtive Eleven o’clock lady (flowers have a nickname reserved for butterflies and a scientific name for lepidopterists), a fat blue die showing six so I’m speeding up; a key chain, a button, a sugar cube, an ant that won’t go far with my thumb on its back (besides, the ant that attempts a raid on its own is a fool); a tiny pair of scissors with itsbird’s beak and appetite, a porcelain egg from the time when doorknobs were still laid and each hatching promised a real surprise – let’s break it. I could surely extract many other belongings from this drawer, dig deep in it to my heart’s content, I’m nowhere near the bottom, but I already know I’ll find all the gold in the world before the yellow thumbtack I need, and what’s more, the wastebasket is full.

 
    T HE INDEX fingernail is made for this: by pulling off the pliant top of the thumbtack, I eliminate the problem, that red stain will never again make its impression on my retina, the headless thumbtack, golden, no longer clashes as badly with the other three. At last I shall be able to study the map of the cave seriously. Man’s talons are meant for this kind of small domestic task, but he cannot count on them to dig out his warren. So the karstic network of Pales must not be attributed to the Paleolithic artists who used it, even if they did in fact widen some of the passageways by hand, as you can see from the clods of clay pushed up against the cave walls. In reality, a network of this kind is formed by the combined action of water and air, whose corrosive and solvent properties we sometimes experience on our own bodies. Here comes the explanation. It promises to be rather boring since karstic phenomena are produced too slowly to create what could strictly speaking be called entertainment, even if their representation in fast-forward would unquestionably make us forget the formidable storms at sea, because the rock reinforced with ore that we so casually trample underfoot is powerless against the waters sharpened like daggers that suddenly seep between the joints of the stratifications and rapidly dissolve the calcium carbonate that held it together; then it’s a river’s hydraulic pressure that devours the stoneand carves out corridors into which air – full of carbon dioxide and pernicious organic acids that attack in turn – immediately rushes, and frost dynamites everything in its path, everything explodes, the fractured rock crumbles, easy as pie, the flood clears out the rubble or sends it into the depths before abandoning the network, which has now become practicable, consolidated by the sedimentation of clay and silt, propped up by tall limestone concretions, thin translucent columns or massive pillars; the painters are expected, they can go in now, torches in hand, they enter the labyrinth. As soon as they have found a chamber to their liking, they light the juniper wicks of their bruloirs (150 grams of tallow can stoke a sun), the dancing flames and shadows on the walls will evoke living shapes that the artists will capture for all eternity, whereas our cold light from electric bulbs freezes our imaginations; it is implacable, disapproving, the eye of God suspended from the ceiling by a wire – and here comes that thumbtack I had thought I was rid of, turning its dazzling tip on me again and pinning me there, on the upper right-hand corner of the map where I’ve no reason to be.
    It is obvious now that I’ll make no progress as long as the four thumbtacks are not identical. This