Prehistoric Times (5 page)

’Twas not I. Dressed once and for all in my navy blue uniform, I am at least free of all sartorial concerns. I realize, however, that the solution of a single uniform is but compromise, subterfuge, and that if it indiscriminately clothes both guide and guardian, this uniform actually suits neither a guide who would be only a guide nor a guardian who would be only a guardian. I am being pressured to defend a twofold imposture, I understood that from the start, and my prevarications, my recoiling, the totally useless repetitions that I am nonetheless prepared to justify if necessary with great bad faith but without getting flustered, stating for example that the nearby cave is sending this tale back to us as an echo, once, twice, thrice, and the only way to remedy this would be to distance myself from it, the stalling tactics I have been prolonging well beyond my intention, pushing almost to the extreme the mad enterprise of a total inventory that no one until now has dared attempt, as if all the beings and things of this world were separated only by commas and as if there did not exist between them these layers of indifference or mystery that make them individuals, cut off from one another, but also passing remarks
of this sort, reflections somewhat reflective, theories I spin with passion and conviction that could just as well support their opposite, all this dithering in the end is simply a testimony to my scruples: am I not wrongfully assuming the title and characteristics of guardian, dressed in this uniform, and the title and characteristics of guide? This scruple indeed does me credit. I take no pride in it. I had to put forward these moral justifications so that my present behavior, or the behavior of my narrative, would not be unjustly blamed on my laziness. In any case, I am not lazy. In any case, laziness and the routine of work get along quite well. In any case, I’m going to get started.

M
Y WORK
here consists on the one hand of greeting the inquisitive, distributing entrance tickets, leading and commenting on the guided tour, collecting money for the postcards, albums, plaster or resin casts, and photographic reproductions that make up the shop’s inventory (a jammed turnstile, a rickety display case); and on the other of watching over the cave, not only when it is open to the public, when the enemy is within, but after closing time as well, when the enemy has withdrawn; day and night, in other words. Not to mention the upkeep of the site: sweeping with a small hand brush the pebbles, dirt, and seeds carried in on visitors’ shoes, papers fallen from their pockets or tossed carelessly on the ground: contemporary man litters the land with paper, it is the mark of his passing and the sole memento he will leave behind, as if along the way he were crumpling one by one the pages of his own adventure story poorly printed on bus and movie tickets, restaurant checks, empty envelopes, advertising flyers, parish newsletters, strips of cellophane, empty cigarette packs, paper hankies, playing cards, now and then a bit of confetti (there was a party), and, because every boat leaves pretty much the same spume in its wake, I’ve come to the conclusion that the idea of an
endless variety of destinies is a storybook notion that does not pan out in reality, and barely in the novel; the facts are there for all to see, there aren’t that many possibilities, I too was breast-fed, first the left then the right, me too.

Then the left then the right, me too; I too was given gifts of cubes and rings, I too had to have a small operation, I too trembled with fright in the changing rooms at the swimming pool, I too did not understand a thing about math, I too had my heart broken by one of my mother’s friends, yes I too my heart by one of hers, and I could go on like this for a long time, until the end, you’d have to stop me; I was afraid of seeing this tale rapidly run out of steam, but it turns out that a second volume will be necessary (forthcoming), and many, many more so as not to omit a thing in regard to our shared personal past, quite a sum, a universal work that will blend all our autobiographies together and spare us all that repetitious reading as it conjures up across the pages schoolyard, attic, punishment, fungus, letter, encounter, lie, accident, song, kiss, fire, exam, fracture, breakup, storm, and the more modest events of this inevitable life, because I too have known the black gnat that always alights on the freshly repainted white door.

Better to use tweezers – with your fingers you might squash the stuck insect, and then it would be impossible to restore the monochrome without a dab of paint, but you’ve already put the top back on the can, your paintbrush is soaking in white spirit, you’ve cleaned your nails and hung the old spotted jacket back on its peg – the same jacket you wore three years ago during that
memorable encounter – you also know that even the slightest retouching would be visible, annoying, catch the eye – all that frowning to obtain a perfectly smooth, even surface – and drive the painter from his creation.

It turns out, then, and I am the first to be surprised, that the death of a gnat is an important event if we examine it closely; the sequence of disastrous consequences that follows – notably the unexpected importance that it takes on here, as if this story’s entire significance lay therein – causes one to think hard about the true origin of catastrophes. If the death of one single gnat can bring about such chaos, what happens when two, or even three, gnats die at the same time in the same place? What would the world look like today if the least little gnat had never lived, then never died? Wouldn’t things have evolved differently, in every sphere, favorably or unfavorably, given all the gnats that have lived and died, given that more are dying as I speak, given all that will die before these words reach anyone, that some are dying at the moment these words are finally heard, and that so many will die in the coming days and thereafter that in the end when you add them all up they surely weigh a great deal and insidiously alter the course of our destinies. In sum, the death of all these gnats was one of the necessary conditions without which the world would not be what it is, and I don’t think I’m wasting my time or yours by emphasizing here, for the first time as far as I know, the decisive role of this event, the death of a gnat, to which ordinarily we pay no mind, that more often than not goes unnoticed and never in any case arouses real emotion – the crowds suddenly assembled in pain, this shared mourning reflex that suspends all activity and freezes the clouds in the sky. The death of one gnat is no doubt too unobtrusive to make an impression on us, it is abstract, it
escapes the eye that only cries over what it can see; our imagination – whose gift lies more in cosmology than in entomology – can barely conceive of it, thwarted as it is by such minuscule realities, unless of course the stuck insect becomes the sole, central figure on the freshly repainted panel, this door that from now on no one will touch without fear, the kitchen door, as if it opened onto an abyss, all that because of a dead gnat – but no matter how tiny, almost imperceptible, a corpse is still a cumbersome corpse; it’s better to make it disappear before it’s too late – when the paint is dry, you can scrape all you want, a leg will always remain, and nothing is as terrifying as the leg of a dead gnat on a door – delicately remove it with tweezers, if you’d like my advice.

T
O SWEEP
, I was saying, the pebbles, dirt, seeds, old papers, all the trash strewn by the visitors; to keep the galleries and the gift shop in order. In addition to this daily housework, the maintenance of the cave consists of specific, localized operations, no less delicate than the one I mentioned before, about which I spoke previously, at least I thought I did but I cannot find the passage in question, something about a gnat; yet it seems to me that I did say a word about those gnats that get stuck and die on a freshly repainted door, in any case, that was what I’d meant to do, I no longer know why; possibly to illustrate an idea, to document my point, which perhaps had to do with notions of importunity, or incongruity, and so I would have used the example of the black gnat to demonstrate that even a creature the size of a pinhead, if it sets itself down where it has no business, in this case on a door that has just been repainted white, rapidly becomes importunate, particularly because, as the paint dries, the gnat gets more and more embedded, incorporated, and it was my intention to recommend in such an instance, rather than fingers, using tweezers to grasp the insect and delicately remove it; there now, that’s done.

According to the official version, it has been three months since Boborikine left us, but I am sure he is dead, the cave has remained closed ever since: it really needs a good sweeping. They pay me for that, it seems, whereas
my pitiful salary would be just enough to give credence to the idea that I in fact get paid to do nothing. Which would, by the way, justify my lax and relaxed manners – that’s one possible interpretation. For if I get paid to do nothing, as everything would lead us to believe, in particular this pittance of a wage of which I still have not received the first cent, it would be most indelicate of me, and dishonest, to expend any energy counter to the aims of my employers, thereby betraying their trust and the hopes they have placed in me and at the same time ruining their plans. It would therefore be best if I meekly abstained from all initiative and even from the slightest effort. That’s the truth; I’ve been asked again not to move, I’m being held against my will in a state of inactivity that is becoming more and more difficult to put up with for a man of my temperament. One can just imagine that if I could, or if I were to, listen to myself, I would already have gotten down to work, but I’m being paid precisely to curb my zeal and spin my wheels; this is my role in the organization to which I belong, a role all the more thankless in that its meaning completely escapes me: must certain men remain immobile, inert even, so as to serve as reference points for the active ones, as milestones, seamarks, buoys and buffers, foils and bad examples? Consequently, some men would have to be sacrificed, nailed to the spot. But is it not faintly distressing to see my goodwill so scorned? I have been entrusted with an important position, I accept it despite my weakness, determined to show myself worthy, to throw my last strength into my work, and all of a sudden I discover I am being mocked, that in reality I am paid to do nothing; under the pretext that I am housed, whitewashed in navy blue, they are quibbling over a salary that will force me to choose between hunger and thirst.

Another possible interpretation: they consider on high that I was appointed to this position in recognition of services rendered, or services I might have rendered, that is, out of charity, that I was assigned here the way an old horse that ran well is put in a paddock rather than simply slaughtered, but now it would be out of place if we were to ask for a greener pasture or a higher salary: if we push our luck too far, we might even antagonize our patrons, wear out our welcome, and wind up tossed out on the street or led to the slaughterhouse one morning among the mooing, drooling cows that give off steam like ships about to leave shore; from this perspective, their frantic tails are no longer tails. Instead I see the arms of passengers waving farewell with their hankies, farewell, the cleaver smashes the skulls of all those poor wretches. When one pushes one’s luck too far, it goes overboard, and here I am cruelly ejected from the strict limits of my duties, I land who knows where and to my great surprise find myself debating questions that do not come within my remit: how, for example, are my opinions on the slaughtering of animals and maritime companies worthy of holding our attention for so long? Whence stems this authority? Will my questions in fact be transmitted to the right people and taken into account so that henceforth, on the one hand, cows will be received in more kindly fashion in the slaughterhouses and, on the other, the safety of passengers will at last be guaranteed on transatlantic liners? I should hope my observations will be taken seriously. As for this most recent postponement of my narrative’s development, it will at least have allowed us to focus for a moment on what is happening elsewhere. One would too easily have a tendency to cut oneself off from the world. In fact, this might not be digression’s only charm: perhaps I have made more progress than it seems – perhaps, if you think about it, digression really is the shortest distance between two points, the straight line being so very congested.

T
O SWEEP
, but also and on a regular basis to gently brush with water the cave engravings that are covered in clayey drippings, to spray the walls with a (10%) formalin solution every week in order to combat the proliferation of algae, moss and lichen, fungus, mold and mildew, all the destructive thallophytes, and to dissolve as well the bat droppings, the acidity of which corrodes the rock, which then becomes friable and crumbles, even if today there remain only a dozen or so chiropterans in the cave, whereas, when it was first discovered, there lived a colony of one thousand. Where have they gone? And where did they come from, how long had they been there, where
do
bats come from? I’ve often wondered. I’ve always been very curious about bats, that life after death of theirs intrigues me no end. There is nothing less concrete than a bat, nothing more stealthy or noiseless than a bat, fluttering as if in a cage when it’s in the open air, but uncatchable, never in contact, never on the ground: eschatology could not better describe our immortal soul. Every mystery pales in comparison to this one; it touches on the true nature of the soul and the conditions of its afterlife, a twofold enigma that also concerns bats, you can draw your own conclusions.

Some by the hundreds find refuge in the painted caves, our oldest sanctuaries. I deplore the fact that the builders of churches and cathedrals,
following the orders of religious authorities blinded by vanity or prompted by their will to power, propelled these aerospace edifices skyward: the higher and pointier they are, the farther they rise from the ground, the more solemn the homage to the Creator, whereas to truly give thanks to Him, it would seem more appropriate to withdraw into the very heart of His creation, to get as close as possible to the earth’s central core, that flawless original diamond that was gradually covered in sediment, tainted, carbonized, buried beneath the mud and petroleum produced by decomposition, all the strata of lies, of dissembling, granite slabs, leaden weights, funerary marbles, rough barks, old crusts, all the way up to this greensward, these fatuous flowerets. Prehistoric artists worked in this direction, toward the depths, their frescoes extol a dynamic world dominated by the powerful and resolute figures of mammoths and bison, where man, beset by instincts as vague and fickle as his desires, remains in the background, his true place in the territory, that of the most ill-favored creature ever in all his nakedness of a beast flayed alive, his skin as sensitive as the water’s surface and his hunger perpetual. The prehistoric artist revered these splendid, sturdy animals; they had no weaknesses, no uncertainty; their senses warned them about the future, they fled winter before the first chill, whereas man awoke one morning shivering, every season took him by surprise, disoriented even when he stayed in the same place, day in day out. Perhaps the first hunting rites performed in these caves in fact evolved not, as I say rather rashly a little further down, from a belief in their magical powers, but from a more or less conscious need to punctuate that laboriously begun, unsettled existence that had no temporal supports or reference points in comparison to the calm self-confidence of animals that simply had to live their lives in order to fulfill their destiny. Time passed without giving
any purchase to men. Rituals had to be created in order to control it to some extent so that man could orient himself, gain a foothold at last in a world that was very poorly organized, governed solely by the laws of nature, and in which intelligence was, in short, the too obvious trait of easy prey.