The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [100]
“That was the moment I was most attracted to him. It seemed so natural, like the real him, wide open to joy.”
“You’ll never know until you try him out,” said Clothilde. “I bought one of those silly souvenir ashtrays when I was a young girl, which carried an old saying on the base—‘Men are like melons, you have to squeeze a thousand before you find a really good one.’ My mother was very shocked.”
They drove through the town to Clothilde’s surprisingly modern house on a hill overlooking a great bend of the river. They parked, and Clothilde led them through a narrow front door into a long, wide room filled with light from the sliding glass door that overlooked her terrace and the river. At the terrace table, a man was sitting and smoking, a bottle of still sealed champagne and a bunch of roses beside him.
“Horst,” cried Clothilde. “What a lovely surprise.”
CHAPTER 14
The Vézère Valley, 15,000 B.C.
The new Keeper of the Deer, who still thought of himself as plain Deer, felt considerably confused. The ceremony had been brief and almost casual, the Keeper of the Bulls gabbling through his words of praise and welcome into brotherhood, while his sponsor, the Keeper of the Horses, fumed silently at his side. His treasured possession, the lamp of the Keeper of the Bison, had been taken from him at the village and then brusquely returned to him in the cave. The other Keepers had lit his way to the rear passage, stumbling around the stepped bend, and praised his bison and his swimming deer. The Keeper of the Bulls had then lit his lamp with his own, and stomped back to the cave entrance where the apprentices waited, awed by their guess at whatever mysteries had been vouchsafed to their former fellow. Deer chose the youngest of them, called Dry Leaf from the time of his birth, and the one who had helped him finish the coloring of the bison, to be his pupil. He would rather have chosen Moon—and he now thought of her as simply “Moon”—not for what she meant to him but simply for her talent. The other Keepers had embraced him, and the Keeper of the Bulls had managed barely to touch him during his cursory contact. And that had been all.
Without knowing exactly what to expect, he had expected more. Perhaps a ritual introduction to the beasts of the cave, or a token contribution to the work of each of the other Keepers, or a common sacrifice at the entrance fire. But no, not even a feast. This had been a routine business at the close of a routine day, and Deer felt diminished by it. Dry Leaf was looking up at him with stars in his eyes, finally believing that he too one day might ascend to the splendid rank of Keeper. Deer could not let his disappointment show before the lad, and so gave him firm instructions on the colors he would need for the morrow, and sent him scampering off down the hill, looking younger than Deer thought he had every been.
“Come eat at my fire this night,” said the Keeper of the Horses, and took him closely by the arm to lead him downhill, saying nothing, but making a ceremony of it.
At his fire, all the Keeper’s kin were gathered, standing to welcome them. Sons and daughters and baby grandchildren, even his woman’s brothers. This was a full assembly, as if for a funeral or—his hopes leaped—a betrothal. Moon darted to the water skin hanging on its tripod and thrust two handful of moss into the water that had been warmed by hot stones. She withdrew them, dripping, and handed one to her father and the other to Deer, her eyes downcast.
“Welcome to this hearth, Keeper of the Deer,” she said, her voice not quite even. They sluiced off the dust of the day. Deer sniffed the air and looked down at the roasting meat on the spit above the fire. Moon bent and gave the spit a quarter turn, and then took some wild herbs from a beveled stone and sprinkled them onto the glistening surface. He smiled in pleasure at the girl’s concentration on her task.
The Keeper’s woman handed a wooden bowl to her husband and another to him, and made her own