—Can’t you imagine them, crouching here in the cold as the sun sank, with nothing to warm them but a small fire and a few skins? But enduring, enduring, enduring! They were heroes, Davey.
—I don’t suppose they conceived of anything better. They can’t have been much more than animals.
—They were our ancestors. They were more like us than they were like any animal.
—Physically, perhaps. But what kind of brains had they? What sort of mind?
—A herd-mind, probably. But they may have known a few things we have lost on the long journey from the cave to—well, to the law-courts.
—I don’t see any good in romanticizing savages. They knew how to get a wretched living and hang on to life for twenty-five or thirty years. But surely anything human, any sort of culture or civilized feeling or whatever you want to call it, came ages later?
—No, no; not at all. I can prove it to you now. It’s a little bit dangerous, so follow me, and be careful.
She went to the very back of the cave, which may have been two hundred feet deep, and I was not happy to follow her, because it grew darker at every step, and though she had a big electric torch it seemed feeble in that blackness. But when we had gone as far as seemed possible, she turned to me and said, “This is where it begins to be difficult, so follow me very closely, close enough to touch me at all times, and don’t lose your nerve.” Then she stepped behind an outcropping of rock which looked like solid cave wall and scrambled up into a hole about four feet above the cave floor.
I followed, very much alarmed, but too craven to beg off. In the hole, through which it was just possible to move on hands and knees, I crept after the torch, which flickered intermittently because every time Liesl lifted her back she obscured its light. And then, after perhaps a dozen yards of this creeping progress over rough stone, we began what was to me a horrible descent.
Liesl never spoke or called to me. As the hole grew smaller she dropped from her knees and crawled on her belly, and there was nothing for me but to do the same. I was as frightened as I have ever been in my life, but there was nothing for me to do but follow, because I had no idea of how I could retreat. Nor did I speak to her; her silence kept me quiet. I would have loved to hear her speak, and say something in reply, but all I heard was the shuffling as she crawled and wriggled, and now and then one of her boots kicked against my head. I have heard of people whose sport it is to crawl into these mountain holes, and read about some of them who had stuck and died. I was in terror, but somehow I kept on wriggling forward. I have not wriggled on my belly since I was a child, and it hurt; my shoulders and neck began to ache torturingly, and at every hunch forward my chest, privates, and knees were scraped unpleasantly on the stone floor. Liesl had outfitted me in some winter clothes she had borrowed from one of the workmen at Sorgenfrei, and though they were thick, they were certainly not much protection from the bruises of this sort of work.
How far we wriggled I had no idea. Later Liesl, who had made the journey several times, said it was just under a quarter of a mile, but to me it might have been ten miles. At last I heard her say, Here we are, and as I crawled out of the hole and stood—very gingerly because for some reason she did not use her electric torch and the darkness was complete and I had no idea how high the roof might be—there was the flash of a match, and soon a larger flame that came from a torch she had lit.
—This is a pine-torch; I think it the most appropriate light for this place. Electricity is a blasphemy here. The first time I came, which was about three years ago, there were remains of pine torches still by the entry, so that was how they must have lit this place.
—Who are you talking about?
—The people of the caves. Our ancestors. Here, hold this torch while I light another. It takes some time for the torches to give much light. Stand where you are and let it unfold before you.
I thought she must mean that we had entered one of those caves, of which I have vaguely heard, which are magnificently decorated with primitive paintings. I asked her if that were it, but all she would say was, “Very much earlier than that,” and stood with her torch held high.
Slowly, in the flickering light, the cave revealed itself. It was about the size of a modest chapel; I suppose it might have held fifty people; and it was high, for the roof was above the reach of the light from our torches. It was bitter cold but there was no ice on the walls; there must have been lumps of quartz, because they twinkled eerily. Liesl was in a mood that I had never seen in her before; all her irony and amusement were gone and her eyes were wide with awe.
—I discovered this about three years ago. The outer cave is quite famous, but nobody had noticed the entrance to this one. When I found it I truly believe I was the first person to enter it in—how long would you guess, Davey?
—I can’t possibly say. How can you tell?
—By what is here. Haven’t you noticed it yet?
—It just seems to be a cave. And brutally cold. Do you suppose somebody used it for something?
—Those people. The ancestors. Look here.
She led me toward the farthest wall from where we had entered, and we came to a little enclosure, formed by a barrier made of heaped up stones; in the cave wall, above the barrier, were seven niches, and I could just make out something of bone in each of these little cupboards; old, dark brown bone, which I gradually made out to be skulls of animals.
—They are bears. The ancestors worshipped bears. Look, in this one bones have been pushed into the eyeholes. And here, you see, the leg-bones have been carefully piled under the chin of the skull.
—Do you suppose the bears lived in here?
—No cave-bear could come through the passage. No; they brought the bones here, and the skins, and set up this place of worship. Perhaps someone pulled on the bear skin, and there was a ceremony of killing.
—That was their culture, was it? Playing bears in here?
—Flippant fool! Yes, that was their culture.
—Well, don’t snap at me. I can’t pretend it means much to me.
—You don’t know enough for it to mean anything to you. Worse for you, you don’t feel enough for it to mean anything to you.
—Liesl, are we going to go over all that again in the depths of this mountain? I want to get out. If you want to know, I’m scared. Now look: I’m sorry I haven’t been respectful enough about your discovery. I’m sure it means a lot in the world of archaeology, or ethnology, or whatever it may be. The men around here worshipped bears. Good. Now let’s go.
—Not just the men around here. The men of a great part of the world. There are such caves as this all over Europe and Asia, and they have found some in America. How far is Hudson Bay from where you live?
—A thousand miles, more or less.
—They worshipped the bear there, between the great ice ages.
—Does it matter, now?
—Yes, I think it matters now. What do we worship today?
—Is this the place or the time to go into that?
—Where better? We share the great mysteries with these people. We stand where men once came to terms with the facts of death and mortality and continuance. How long ago, do you suppose?
—I haven’t any idea.
—It was certainly not less than seventy-five thousand years ago; possibly much, much more. They worshipped the bear and felt themselves better and greater because they had done so. Compared with this place the Sistine Chapel is of yesterday. But the purpose of both places is the same. Men sacrificed and ate of the noblest thing they could conceive, hoping to share in its virtue.
—Yes, yes: I read The Golden Bough when I was young.
—Yes, yes; and you misunderstood what you read because you accepted its rationalist tone instead of understanding its facts. Does this place give you no sense of the greatness and indomitability and spiritual splendour of man? Man is a noble animal, Davey. Not a good animal; a noble animal.
—You distinguish between the
two?
—Yes, you—you lawyer, I do.
—Liesl, we mustn’t quarrel. Not here. Let’s get out and I’ll argue all you please. If you want to split morality—some sort of accepted code—off from the highest values we have, I’ll promise you a long wrangle. I am, as you say, a lawyer. But for the love of God let’s get back to the light.
—For the love of God? Is not God to be found in the darkness? Well, you mighty lover of the light and the law, away we go.
But then, to my astonishment, Liesl flung herself on the ground, face down before the skulls of the bears, and for perhaps three minutes I stood in the discomfort we always feel when somebody nearby is praying and we are not. But what form could her prayers be taking? This was worse—much worse—than Dr Johanna’s Comedy Company of the Psyche. What sort of people had I fallen among on this Swiss journey?
When she rose she was grinning and the charm I had learned to see in her terrible face was quite gone.
—Back to the light, my child of light. You must be reborn into the sun you love so much, so let us lose no time. Leave your torch, here, by the way out.
She dowsed her own torch by stubbing it on the ground and I did so too. As the light diminished to a few sparks I heard a mechanical clicking, and I knew she was snapping the switch of her electric torch, but no light came.
—Something is wrong. The batteries or the bulb. It won’t light.
—But how are we to get back without light?
—You can’t miss the path. Just keep crawling. You’d better go first.
—Liesl, am I to go into that tunnel without a glimmer of light?
—Yes, unless you wish to stay here in the dark. I’m going, certainly. If you are wise you will go first. And don’t change your mind on the way, because if anything happens to you, Davey, I can’t turn back, or wriggle backward. It’s up and out for both of us, or death for both of us…. Don’t think about it any longer. Go on!
She gave me a shove toward the hole of the tunnel, and I hit my head hard against the upper side of it. But I was cowed by the danger and afraid of Liesl, who had become such a demon in the cave, and I felt my way into the entrance and began to wriggle.
What had been horrible coming in, because it was done head downward, was more difficult than anything I have ever attempted until I began the outward journey; but now I had to wriggle upward at an angle that seemed never less than forty-five degrees. It was like climbing a chimney, a matter of knees and elbows, and frequent cracks on the skull. I know I kicked Liesl in the face more than once, but she made no sound except for the grunting and panting without which no progress was possible. I had worn myself out going in; going out I had to find strength from new and unguessed-at sources. I did not think; I endured, and endurance took on a new character, not of passive suffering but of anguished, fearful striving. Was it only yesterday I had been called the boy who could not shudder?
Suddenly, out of the darkness just before me, came a roar so loud, so immediate, so fearful in suggestion that I knew in that instant the sharpness of death. I did not lose consciousness. Instead I knew with a shame that came back in full force from childhood that my bowels had turned to water and gushed out into my pants, and the terrible stench that filled the tunnel was my own. I was at the lowest ebb, frightened, filthy, seemingly powerless, because when I heard Liesl’s voice—“Go on, you dirty brute, go on”—I couldn’t go on, dragging with me that mess which, from being hot as porridge, was cooling quickly in the chill of the tunnel.
—It’s only a trick of the wind. Did you think it was the bear-god coming to claim you? Go on. You have another two hundred yards at least. Do you think I want to hang about here with your stink? Go on!
—I can’t, Liesl. I’m done.
—You must.
—How?
—What gives you strength? Have you no God? No, I suppose not. Your kind have neither God nor Devil. Have you no ancestors?
Ancestors? Why, in this terrible need, would I want such ornaments? Then I thought of Maria Dymock, staunch in the street of Staunton, demanding money from the passersby to get herself and her bastard to Canada. Maria Dymock, whom Doc Staunton had suppressed, and about whom my father would hear nothing after that first, unhappy letter. (What had Pledger-Brown said? “Too bad, Davey; he wanted blood and all we could offer was guts.”) Would Maria Dymock see me through? In my weakened, terrified, humiliated condition I suppose I must have called upon Maria Dymock and something—but it’s absurd to think it could have been she!—gave me the power I needed to wriggle that last two hundred yards, until an air that was sweeter but no less cold told me that the outer cave was near.
Out of the darkness into the gloom. Out of the gloom into sunshine, and the extraordinary realization that it was about three o’clock on a fine Christmas Eve, and that I was seven thousand feet above the sea on a Swiss mountain. An uncomfortable, messy walk back to the cable-railway and the discovery—God bless the Swiss!—that the little station had a good men’s toilet with lots of paper towels. A dizzy, light-headed journey downward on one of the swaying cars, during which Liesl said nothing but sulked like some offended shaman from the days of her bear-civilization. We drove home in silence; even when she indicated that she wished me to sit on a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung that was in the car, so as not to soil her upholstery, she said nothing. But when we drove into the stable-yard which led to the garages at Sorgenfrei, I spoke.
—Liesl, I am very, very sorry. Not for being afraid, or messing my pants, or any of that. But for falling short of what you expected. You thought me worthy to see the shrine of the bears, and I was too small a person to know what you meant. But I think I have a glimmering of something better, and I beg you not to shut me out of your friendship.
Another woman might have smiled, or taken my hand, or kissed me, but not Liesl. She glared into my eyes.
—Apology is the cheapest coin on earth, and I don’t value it. But I think you have learned something, and if that is so, I’ll do more than be your friend. I’ll love you, Davey. I’ll take you into my heart, and you shall take me into yours. I don’t mean bed-love, though that might happen, if it seemed the right thing. I mean the love that gives all and takes all and knows no bargains.
I was bathed and in bed by five o’clock, dead beat. But so miraculous is the human spirit, I was up and about and able to eat a good dinner and watch a Christmas broadcast from Lausanne with Ramsay and Eisengrim and Liesl, renewed—yes, and it seemed to me reborn, by the terror of the cave and the great promise she had made to me a few hours before.
>> >> >> >> << << << <<
Dec. 25, Thurs. and Christmas Day: Woke feeling better than I have done in years. To breakfast very hungry (why does happiness make us hungry?) and found Ramsay alone at the table.
—Merry Christmas, Davey. Do you recall once telling me you hated Christmas more than any day in the year?
—That was long ago. Merry Christmas, Dunny. That was what Father used to call you, wasn’t it?
—Yes, and I always hated it. I think I’d almost rather be called Buggerlugs.
Eisengrim came in and put a small pouch beside my plate. Obviously he meant me to open it, so I did, and out fell a fine pair of ivory dice. I rolled them a few times, without much luck. Then he took them.
—What would you like to come up?
—Double sixes, surely?
He cast the dice, and sure enough, there they were.
—Loaded?
—Nothing so coarse. They are quite innocent, but inside they have a little secret. I’ll show you how it works later.
Ramsay laughed.
—You don’t suppose an eminent silk would use such things, Magnus? He’d be thrown out of all his clubs.
—I don’t know what an eminent silk might do with dice but I know very well what he does in court. Are you a lucky man? To be lucky is always to play with—well, with dice like these. You might like to keep them in your pocket, Davey, just as a reminder of—well, of
what our friend Ramsay calls the variability and mutability and general rumness of things.
Liesl had come in, and now she handed me a watch.
—From the Brazen Head.
It was a handsome piece, and on the back was engraved, “Time is … Time was … Time is past,” which is perfectly reasonable if you like inscribed watches, and of course these were the words she and Eisengrim used to introduce their Brazen Head illusion. I knew that, between us, it meant the mystery and immemorial age of the cave. I was embarrassed.
—I had no idea there was to be an exchange of gifts. I’m terribly sorry, but I haven’t anything for anyone.
—Don’t think of it. It is just as one feels. You see, dear Ramsay has not worried about gifts either.
—But I have. I have my gifts here. I wanted to wait till everyone was present before giving mine.
Ramsay produced a paper bag from under the table and solemnly handed us each a large gingerbread bear. They were handsome bears, standing on their hindlegs and each holding a log of wood.
—These are the real St Gall bears; the shops are full of them at this time of year.
Eisengrim nibbled at his bear experimentally.
—Yes, they are made like the bear which is the city crest, or totem, aren’t they?
—Indeed, they are images of the veritable bear of St Gall himself. You know the legend. Early in the seventh century an Irish monk, Gallus, came to this part of the world to convert the wild mountaineers. They were bear-worshippers, I believe. He made his hermitage in a cave near where the present city stands, and preached and prayed. But he was so very much a holy man, and so far above merely creatural considerations, that he needed a servant or a friend to help him. Where would he find one? Now it so happened that Gallus’s cave had another inhabitant, a large bear. And Gallus, who was extremely long-headed, made a deal with the bear. If the bear would bring him wood for his fire, he would give the bear bread to eat. And so it was. And this excellent gingerbread—I hope I may say it is excellent without seeming to praise my own gift—reminds us even today that if we are really wise, we will make a working arrangement with the bear that lives with us, because otherwise we shall starve or perhaps be eaten by the bear. You see, like every tale of a saint it has a moral, and the moral is my Christmas gift to you, Davey, you poor Canadian bear-choker, and to you, Magnus, you enchanting fraud, and to you, my dearest Liesl, though you don’t need it: cherish your bear, and your bear will feed your fire.